


Play For Me

by queenmcgonagall



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-07
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-07 22:22:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 67,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1125054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenmcgonagall/pseuds/queenmcgonagall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry is a prodigal pianist, tortured by his own passion and dissatisfaction with his talent, looking for something, but he doesn’t know what. Louis lives a wild life as a drama student, but doesn’t feel alive on stage and needs something to care about; his coldness scares him a little bit. Neither of them were expecting to find solace in a stranger on the street but their unlikely meeting sparks a connection that takes them on a journey of self-discovery and love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Preview

**Author's Note:**

> OKAY. 
> 
> this is an abandoned fic!!! forewarning to anyone!! i will not be finishing this fic!! 
> 
> it is at approximately the halfway point, but my life has become far too busy to finish it and there are other things i want to work on! it was previously posted only on my tumblr, but i want to remove it from there and keep it on here. there are 9 chapters written, for a total of about 67k words.   
> i'm sorry to anyone who has been following this fic on tumblr, please feel free to message me at queenmcgonagall with any thoughts or complaints, but i won't be changing my mind on this, so please don't try.

Louis stands in the doorway, leaning against the frame. He’s silent, arms crossed.

The small room seems to be alive, thrumming with the music coursing from Harry’s fingers. The knots in his shoulders ripple and bulge like tree roots, standing out in harsh contrast against his pale skin. His head is bent in concentration, curls sticking to the back of his neck as he hunches over the glossy black and white keys.

The drops of sweat on the nape of Harry’s neck glisten, rolling into the deep crevices of his naked back. Louis watches as one travels the length of his spine and disappears into the waistband of his trousers. He wants to run his tongue along every sharp vertebrae, to feel the vibrations along his taste-buds as Harry’s muscles clench and tighten, the sensual music throbbing around them, filling the room with its raw sound.

The melody suddenly stops. Harry slumps over, heaving, quiet rasps breaking out of his mouth and puncturing the new silence. Louis goes to move forward but before he even takes a step, Harry’s fists are in the air and slamming down on the keys, an earth-shattering crash that rings in Louis’s ears and slams into his heart.

He knows he should leave. He should let Harry be alone with the frustration that pulses within him, bursting free of its confines and lying exposed in the harsh light streaming in through the open window. He should quietly tiptoe away from the room and go back down the hall, away from the small room that holds so many secrets and whispered dreams. He should go back to sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea and running through his lines; he is an ever-passive spectator to the tempest within Harry, qualified only to listen and not to truly comprehend the strains of Harry’s music softly emanating from the room at the end of the hall.  

He’s never listened to his brain before. His instinct tells him to go to Harry.

He crosses the room in three steps, the bare wooden boards muffling his footsteps, the rush of cars on the street below blanketing all noise.

Louis wonders if people on the street can hear Harry’s playing. He hopes so. It’s wasted on him.

He reaches out one finger and glides it from the junction of Harry’s neck and shoulder, feeling the muscles quiver under the skin, down his arm, tracing the veins popping out in harsh lines against skin that flushes at Louis’s touch.

Harry’s breath hitches and his shoulders rise and fall in a stuttered rhythm. Louis can almost hear his heart, thudding away.

Louis can smell the sweat on Harry, feel it soaking the front of his t-shirt as he leans against Harry’s naked back, feeling the sharp juts of his shoulder blades dig into Louis’s stomach. The sweat smells like sex and passion and maybe a little bit like love.

 He runs his hands down Harry’s arms and clasps the fingers in his own, squeezing gently.

The room is noiseless, the cars below seem nonexistent. Time seems to stand still as Louis slowly brings Harry’s hands back to the ivory keys. One finger slips and plays an A, the note ringing in the air like a church bell and then dying away.

All Louis can hear is Harry’s laboured breathing. As he leans his head around Harry’s, he sees eyes clenched shut, chin trembling. His red lips are bitten and chewed raw, drops of blood balancing delicately on them. Louis watches as one gathers in the corner of Harry’s mouth, darkening the pale skin with its hue.

Louis licks the shell of Harry’s ear, tasting the salty sweat. His hands cover Harry’s on the keys, thumbs brushing thumbs.

“Play for me.”


	2. Chapter 1

Louis sometimes wishes he were a painter. He wishes he could pick up a brush and lay strokes on a canvas, taking pieces of himself and turning them into art. The softly falling snow, backlit by the orange streetlights, would speak to Louis in volumes, and wouldn’t be wasted. If Louis were a painter, he would draw faces of different expressions, shading red anger and blue sadness. If Louis were a painter, he would recreate the homeless woman across the street, the one always on the corner of 5th and Houston, the one who has wrinkles so deep and plentiful Louis wants to lose himself in them and explore her age, explore who she is and what she did to deserve this fate. He would go up to the man with the saxophone on Broadway Street, throw a couple hundred dreams in his case, sit down and draw him from the ground, smearing inky black and sneaking music notes into the skin of the paint, into the skin of the man. If Louis were a painter, he wouldn’t stand on a stage and pretend to be someone else, forgetting who he was in the process. He would take his dreams and he would impart them on canvas, painting scarlet lust and cerulean misery and maybe hopefully some love, but he doesn’t know what color love is. Louis would know who he was, if he were a painter. 

But he’s not. He’s an actor and he doesn’t know who he is and he doesn’t paint lust and he’s walking home from class on the streets of New York at 9:00 pm on a Friday night, December the 12th.  Head bent, coat turned up against the snow, Louis hurries along the streets, disregarding the swarms of Christmas shoppers around him.

It’s a long walk from the Lincoln Center, where The Juilliard School is located, to his flat, but most days he enjoys the walk that is his only quiet time of the day, the period when he’s all himself and he lives in his own skin, not the skin of the past or the future or of lives not his own.

Dreamer Louis walks because he loves the city he doesn’t own, doesn’t belong to. He loves New York in the summer, the green of the trees in Central Park and the flowers that drip from hanging baskets, shockingly pink and purple. He even loves the tourists that cram the subways. He loves New York in the autumn, the reds and browns and golds that bathe the city in warm shades. The streets of New York are a labyrinth of colour and sensation and Louis loses himself into the rush of the city. It’s lonely sometimes, living in a place when the person next to you on the crowded subway has no interest in your life, doesn’t know your mother from knitting club, and doesn’t play tennis with your little sister. Doncaster and New York are as different as Earth and Mars, but Louis feels he fits in New York almost as well as his hometown.

Louis is rethinking his decision to walk home as the cold snow drifts into his collar and slides down his back, causing goose bumps to rise up on the nape of his neck, the frigid air biting into his skin. He jams mitten-clad hands into his jacket pockets, feet sliding on the increasingly slushy pavement. The noise on the streets is deafening, cars honking constantly and the roar of the subways causing the ground to tremble, dislodging snow from the tops of streetlights and falling in soft thumps into the curb, immediately whisked away by the cars tearing along at speeds that never fail to astound Louis.

If he had been any sort of student that cared about his studies, Louis would be contemplating the catastrophe that was his class that evening, instead of wishing his life was something other than it was. His Dramatic Expressions class is usually one of his favourite classes, but tonight the mind-numbing boredom had wormed inside his mind and sat down for a visit, prompting him to walk out at break-time, intent only on getting home before the snow got any worse. Louis is fully aware of the fact that as a student of the prestigious school that he pulled a lot of strings to get into, he should put acting above a hot cup of tea, but he just can’t find it in him to care, not when he knows his psychotic flat-mate, comfy sofa, and kettle are waiting for him at home.

As Louis nears the street that turned onto his own, he comes within sight of the Royal Blues Club, the small lounge that is tucked in between towering skyscrapers. He passes it every day, but he’s never been inside. The red and gold of the glowing sign flickers as snow swirls around it, the door opening and closing with the ring of a little bell. Every time someone goes in or out the door, a burst of warm air flies into the street, accompanied by bluesy music and the loud chatter of the club’s occupants. People rush past the club, ignoring its existence, their minds only focused on getting out of the city before the interstates get too bad from the snow.

A wreath hangs on the large wooden door, a large red bow hanging at the bottom. The tails of the bow flap in the wind, like flames licking the door. There are four small steps on the tiny rickety staircase down to the door of the club, each step coated in a thin layer of pure white snow. Louis watches as a short, balding man hurries down the steps, his feet shuffling the snow as he slips slightly, knocking into a tall figure in a black jacket leaning against the brick wall of the club. As Louis gets closer to the club, he can see that in the time between the man sliding on the steps and then opening the door, a fresh layer of white had fallen again.

The man against the wall turns around and Louis is surprised to see that he’s no man, but a boy. He leans casually against the side of the wall, one leg bent and his foot resting on a brick jutting out. He’s lanky and thin, taller than Louis first thought, and his upper half is bundled into a thick black coat, the collar hugging his long, pale neck.  Underneath the gray beanie pulled low over his head, Louis can see the beginnings of brown curly hair, brushing his forehead, one lock hanging over his eye. His eyes are cast down, eyeing the long thin cigarette he twirls between his fingers. Louis shivers at the thought of bare hands in this kind of weather and wonders if the boy’s need for a cigarette is so severe that he’s willing to brave the blistering cold that whips through the street or if he’s actually outside for a reason. The boy cups the cigarette in his hand to light it, hiding it from the harsh blizzard, and Louis can see the bright flicker of the flame, illuminating a small patch of light into the increasingly dark night.

As Louis gets closer to the boy, he can see he’s even younger than he thought. He can’t be more than 18, barely old enough to be hanging outside a club in downtown New York, let alone appearing to be totally at ease with what he’s doing, as if he’s been standing on street corners and smoking for his entire life. Louis wonders what kind of life this boy has that his Friday nights consist of being moody on snowy street corners in this crime-ridden neighborhood. Louis is vaguely surprised by the feeling of pity that swells in his heart, perhaps prompted by the cherubic cheeks of this boy, cheeks that contrast disturbingly with his hardened appearance of nonchalance. His long pale fingers roll the cigarette slightly and flick a few ashes off, letting them fly away into the snowy night; he then brings the cigarette up to full, pink lips and takes a long drag, cheeks hollowing out and matching the hollows under his eyes, where eyelashes brush purpling bruises, the kind you get from staying up all night. As Louis watches, the boy tugs the cigarette out of his mouth, coolly and casually releasing a stream of smoke. The tip of a pink tongue pokes out and licks his lips, before the cigarette is back in his mouth. 

A completely different kind of goose bumps erupts all along Louis’s arms inside his jacket at the sight of the plush mouth wrapping around the cigarette dangling between two fingers, almost lazily, as if the boy can’t even be cared to hold it firmly. As Louis stares at him, the boy’s eyes lift, as if he feels Louis’s gaze on him, and he stares at Louis from 12 feet away, the snow between them whirling around and Louis almost feels like he’s in a cheesy romance novel as they lock eyes, blue on green. As if to conform to the cliché his life has become in the last five minutes, Louis’s heart thuds an extra beat, like he’s missed a step on the staircase, as the boy’s wide green eyes burn and hold and see right through Louis as he walks toward him.

Louis’s steps slow, as if the snow is holding his feet to the ground, but at the same time he feels as if he’s being propelled forward by something invisible, the boy’s eyes reeling him in, something drawing him towards this kid that Louis just happened to notice off to the side of the street.  Four seconds can’t even have passed, but it feels like Louis has been staring into this boy’s eyes for years, his insides tingling. Louis is almost in front of the boy by the time he breaks his gaze, eyes flicking back down to the smouldering cigarette, a smudge of black ash dirtying his fingers, staining the alabaster. Louis knows his face is bright red as he hurries past the boy, eyes trained on the snowy sidewalk in front of him. He passes within two feet of the boy; his hands shake inside his jacket pockets and he can feel the boy’s eyes on his back as he almost speed-walks down the street towards his flat.

When he’s at the corner of the street that his flat is on, Louis turns around and looks back down the dark street towards the club. The slender boy is standing directly under the streetlight, his silhouette throwing long shadows on the snow. From this distance, he can just barely see the boy throw down the cigarette into the snow, grind it with his heel and disappear into the club, the opening of the door throwing beams of light out into the drifting whiteness and releasing the faint strains of jazz music.

Bloody hell, Louis thinks, as he slips and slides down the icy pavement towards his tall apartment building that towers over the narrow road. The dark and dingy street almost looks angelic in the cold night air, the snow blanketing every dirty surface; the filthy house steps look like they have icing sugar powdered onto them. Every railing of every fire escape has an inch of snow on it. As he looks up into the darkening sky, Louis recalls the burning gaze of the green-eyed boy and he swallows past the dryness in his throat. He sticks out his tongue and catches a few flakes of snow on his tongue, willing his mind to forget Green-Eyed Boy and concentrate on the utter and complete chaos that his flat will be, if his flat-mate is home.

As Louis climbs the narrow staircase of his apartment building, his heart sinks lower in chest and the desire to laugh grows stronger at the increasingly loud sound of music that seems to be emanating from their flat on the top floor. By the time he’s standing outside of the door of 8A, the unmistakable sound of Wagner is pulsating from inside the flat, surely irritating the inhabitants of the apartments around them. Rolling his eyes, Louis unlocks the door and steps inside. The sight that greets him is one he can never get used to, no matter how many times he sees it.

A caramel skinned boy stands in the middle of the room, his face painted entirely blue, eyes closed, and his arms are a striking yellow, covered in the paint up to his biceps. He’s naked.  The music is deafening, beating on the inside of Louis’s head, but Zayn doesn’t seem to notice it and appears to be in his own world, standing perfectly still in the exact center of the room. Louis can smell the acrid scent of pot floating around the room, despite the fact that every single window in the flat seems to be open. Snow flies in the windows, collecting in small piles and melting. He’s surprised he couldn’t hear the music from the street, almost as surprised as he is that Zayn hasn’t frozen to the spot; the temperature in the flat must be below zero.  

Large canvases line the walls of the living room; some have indistinguishable art on them, others are blank. The floors are blanketed in huge sheets that used to be white and are now an entire collage of colours. This is what Louis’s flat looks like all the time.

A single canvas lies in the middle of the floor, a stone’s throw from where Louis stands in the hall, his mouth trembling to hold in the amused smile that threatens to crack his face. Streaking the canvas on the floor is huge splotches of blue that, if he isn’t mistaken, Louis is sure come from Zayn’s face, where the brilliant cobalt colour drips in his eyebrows and soaks the roots of his crow black hair, which has obviously had fingers through it a thousand times in the past hour.

“Zayn, love, what the fuck?” Louis steps inside the flat, not bothering to raise his voice as he assumes Zayn is way too high to even acknowledge Louis’s presence, not to mention the roar of cellos and violins and trumpets which dominates the flat. Louis peels off his soaked and snow-covered shoes and gingerly steps through the paint-streaked living room to shut the windows, the blasts of cold air whipping the sheets on the floor, making them flap in loud cracks that smack against the floor. Zayn has now lain down on the canvas and seems not to be moving. Louis ignores him, in favor of the most pressing problem, which is the music that is now threatening to puncture Louis’s eardrums. He walks over to the stereo and punches the ‘pause’ button. The flat immediately falls into dead silence; the only noise is the sheeting snow brushing against the now-closed windows and the strange breathing of Zayn with his face smashed against the canvas.

“Hey, mate.” Zayn’s muffled voice comes from the canvas, slow and drawling, seductive in its quality. When he sits up, he smiles, his teeth covered in blue paint and not their usual white. His eyelashes, though electric blue, do nothing to hide the red-rimmed and glassy eyes that stare out at Louis.

Zayn stands up, pulling himself off the canvas with a wet squelching sound and Louis now sees that his entire front is covered in paint as black as the sky Louis was just walking under.

“Seriously, Zayn, you’re going to get us kicked out for noise pollution, or worse, make our electric bills impossible to pay. Honestly, you do realize the poor flat can’t heat itself when you’re inviting in every flake of snow?” Louis shakes his head in fond amusement. “How long have you been at it?”

Zayn chuckles slightly, carrying the canvas over to the wall and leaning it up against the wall, being careful not to smudge any of the bright splashes that cover it, nor the Zayn-shaped black smear. “Couple hours, maybe? Mrs. Rosenfeld was over here a while ago to say she was going to report me.”

“Hag. What’d you do?”

“Told her Wagner was good for the soul.” Zayn laughs, low and croaking, and pulls on a paint-splattered pair of jeans that sags on his narrow hips, dragging across the floor and brushing red paint like blood in long streaks across the sheets that constantly cover their apartment. He pulls a joint and lighter from his pocket, lighting up and closing his lips over the end of the joint, sucking the smoke into his mouth and then out again, letting it drift over to Louis, who wrinkles his nose at the foul smell.

Louis desperately tries not to think of Green-Eyed Boy’s lips pulling on the cigarette, nor his long thin fingers nimbly rolling it around.

Fuck, stop it, Louis. He reprimands himself and focuses on his flat-mate.

“How was class?” Zayn’s voice comes out wrecked but still managing to be glossy. He flops down on the floor, lying on his back and cocking his head towards Louis, who drops his bag on the floor and sits down next to Zayn, plucking the joint with two fingers, taking a drag himself until it’s too stubby to continue and stamping it out on the floor, a scorch mark joining the thousands of others that litter the wooden boards. Warmth spreads fluidly through his veins, releasing the tension that built up through the encounter with Green-Eyed Boy. Louis relaxes his mouth into a lazy smile at Zayn and chuckles, the throaty sound surprising him and making him giggle a little bit.

“Eh. Left halfway through.” Louis shrugs, exhaling slowly.

“That good?”

“Oh yeah.” Louis replies, sarcastically. He contemplates telling Zayn about Green-Eyed Boy but as he sees Zayn’s eyes drooping shut, he decides against it, getting up and wandering into the kitchen to heat up the kettle for tea. When he pokes his head back into the living room, Zayn is snoring loudly on the floor, his face still bright blue, his arms still yellow.

Zayn is an artist. An insane one. The kind that sits in a frigid cold apartment, naked, paints his own body, and throws himself against canvases. Louis had met him in his first year at Juilliard, when he noticed the dark skinned boy sitting on the back step of the art building, a purple star painted on his left cheek, one eyebrow bright green, furiously slashing at a canvas with a knife until the strips hung in ragged ribbons. It was a pretty intimidating sight, but Louis figured a crazy friend was better than no friend and he’d walked up to Zayn, who happened to be stoned out of his mind and wouldn’t remember Louis until a week later. Somehow the genius madman and Louis had become friends and Louis learned he too was from Britain, here to follow his dreams, whatever the fuck that meant. Zayn dropped out of school a year later, because class and schedules just didn’t conform to the flexible and creative lifestyle that he preferred. Despite dropping out, he went on to sell paintings for thousands, usually high while presenting at exhibits, but that being his natural state, no one thought anything of it.

Now, Zayn’s life consists of destroying their apartment and somehow ending up with thousand dollar paintings out of it, funding his ridiculous lifestyle of getting drunk and smoking pot at all hours of the day. Zayn is often gone for days at a time, only letting Louis know how he is with a text message a day, and when he finally comes home, he’s carrying large paintings that end up going for more than Louis can imagine. Louis thinks Zayn probably spends that time in shady parts of the city, sitting on street corners and painting who knows what. It doesn’t concern him and as long as he doesn’t feel too strongly about the state of their flat, he deals with Zayn’s insanity in exchange for his surprisingly loyal friendship.

When Louis finally slips into bed that night, after enjoying a few cups of tea and a couple episodes of Friends, his mind is almost clear of Green-Eyed Boy. He’s almost forgotten the way the boy’s pale hands had trembled and shivered in the cold and he’s definitely almost forgotten the glow of the boy’s green eyes that seemed to go on for miles into his mind, oceans deep.

(He wishes he could forget plump lips around cigarette.)

That night, Louis dreams of thin fingers and smoke.


	3. Chapter 2

First there was Rupert Stone. Louis was 14 when Rupert Stone happened. Rupert was experimentation. He was hesitant and clumsy fingers in childhood bedrooms and shared ice cream cones at that parlour on the market square. Rupert was a boy of firsts until he became a boy of lasts. He was Louis’s first kiss with a boy, but he was also the first boy Louis ran away from. The appearance of Rupert in Louis’s life was the last thing to slay Louis’s already tattered relationship with his father. Louis left him on the merry-go-round at the playground, just as the words  _I think I love you_  were falling from Rupert’s innocent lips. Louis left him because he wasn’t sure what love was and can you even be in love at 14?

A few boys later, Melrose Backley happened. Melrose was a girl of lasts, never a girl of firsts. Louis’s last kiss with a girl, last attempt to fool himself into thinking maybe he still liked round hips and soft breasts. She obviously didn’t work out. Melrose would slip him a note under their desks at school, asking him to sneak in her window later that night, and Louis would chuckle under his breath, nervous and guilty, and make a joke about how he was Romeo and she was Juliet. She’d giggle thinking he meant it romantically. She’d obviously never read Romeo and Juliet. Didn’t she know? They kill themselves. Louis was a drama queen. And then Melrose wanted Louis to meet her parents and his throat went dry and his 16 year old heart skidded a few beats and the image of Caleb Hart, that boy from geography class, flashed through Louis’s mind and he shook off Melrose’s grasping fingers and walked away.

Caleb Hart didn’t work out either, though. Caleb Hart was only around long enough for Louis to realize good looks weren’t everything. Caleb burnt scars of hate and bigotry into Louis and Louis destroyed him with his infamous mean streak. Perfect hair masks cold hearts and charming wit fools even the wary and thank god Louis had the sense to walk away from that shitshow.

After that, it was a string of boys that Louis walked away from at the first signs of attachment. Maybe it was watching his parent’s marriage shatter before his eyes that did it for Louis. Maybe it was living in a world where love seems to only be in films, for people like Allie and Noah, Jack and Rose, Ross and Rachel. For a while Louis thought maybe love was just for boys and girls and he would be forever stuck in a cycle of being fucked into a dirty mattress by some husky-voiced boy with nice arms and being left the next morning after awkward cups of coffee or hearing those few sacred words being whispered into the dark and the urge to gather his clothes and leave overwhelming him.

The latest was Dom Rowley. Dom was the stereotypical tattoos and piercings and parental disapproval. Louis, a still fairly naïve 18 year old, floated along on the high of Dom’s rebellious nature and imagined that he was in love with the hulking boy who was really more like a man. Dom took Louis and turned him inside out, left him fucked out and wanting more and then he would leave, abandon Louis loose-limbed in the sheets and it was always Dom doing the walking away. It wasn’t until Louis showed Dom his acceptance letter to Juilliard and all Dom did was cut him an extra line of coke that Louis realized it was time to leave.

So if Louis was asked to define himself in four words or less, he would say ‘Louis Tomlinson walks away.’ And it would be true.

———————————————————————————————————————-

Louis would be surprised if he didn’t already know that life liked to fuck him over. He’d be surprised that somehow the boy who’d been haunting his dreams for the past week was standing one aisle over from him at the convenience store down the street. It’s not surprising though, which is why Louis is crouching near a shelf of Mac and Cheese and listening to Green Eyed Boy ask for a pack of Camels from the bored man behind the counter.

Ten minutes ago, all Louis had known about Green-Eyed Boy was the lines of his hands and the flush of his cheeks in the cold and fuck, did he know the depth and the intensity of those eyes that sunk like burnt holes in the boy’s face. And yet now, with the rasp of Green Eyed Boy’s slow, deep voice washing over him, Louis feels as if he’s right up against the boy, face in his collarbone and maybe he’s looking inside of him, at his intestines and his organs and his heart, because Louis thinks he could live for a thousand years if he could just crawl inside Green Eyed Boy’s voice and lay there, soaking up the rawness of it.

Louis watches his own hands tremble next to the blue and orange of the Mac and Cheese box that seems to be blurring in and out of focus. He wants to jump up and pull this boy to him and demand that he tell him his secrets. Why is it that Louis can’t even watch Zayn light up a joint without Green Eyed Boy wavering around the edges of his vision? He watched Zayn throw stark green paint at a blank canvas and there was suddenly a lump in his throat, his trousers curiously tight. He passed the club every day and never saw the boy once and every time the street corner was empty, his heart twisted a little bit and Louis didn’t understand why.

This is unlike him, this is all unlike him. Louis Tomlinson does not obsess, Louis Tomlinson fucks and walks away, remember? Yeah, Louis is fucked up, but he doesn’t fuck himself up over actual people. Louis fucks, drinks, smokes, and laughs but he doesn’t obsess. That’s for people who believe in love.

But Louis has never had this visceral of a reaction to somebody, never had someone crawl under his skin and sit there, tauntingly, with giant green eyes, soft curls, and lips that Louis’s pretty sure would look great curved into a beatific smile.

‘Sir, do you need assistance?’ Louis’s head snaps up, expecting to see the shop owner glaring down at him with distaste. Instead, he hears a low ‘no, fuck you’ in a gravelly voice and he realizes the owner is talking to Green Eyed Boy. Louis hesitates before standing up in time to see Green Eyed Boy bump into a rack of postcards and knock it to the floor. Closer now, Louis can see that his eyes are glassy and empty, his trembling fingers shakily holding onto the cigarette he’s already lit. A glass bottle with only an inch left is tucked into the inside pocket of his jacket.

He’s drunk, Louis realizes belatedly and scorn washes through him, a familiar feeling. Louis prides himself on his classiness. He would never find himself drunk in a shitty convenience store, knocking into things. Louis’s method of partying is clubs that Zayn can get him into, burnt liquids and pretty boys with dark eyes and nice clothes, gleaming lights and shiny countertops.

The boy pushes his way past the concerned shop keeper and flings open the door of the shop, causing the tinkling bell to clank violently against the wall and a rush of cold wind and snow to swoop into the store.

Louis doesn’t know whether he should continue his shopping or follow the boy but something (fate, maybe) tugs on Louis’s feet and he finds himself following the boy out into the frozen night. The two hurry down the street, like some sort of mock puppet show, with Louis trying to stay far enough behind the boy that he doesn’t notice him, but close enough that he doesn’t leave his sight. In the swarms of people on the streets, Louis concentrates on the flopping brown curls that bounce in front of him and he’s not surprised when they suddenly turn onto the street that the Royal Blues Club is on.

Louis is out of breath and wondering why the fuck he cares so much where this kid is going. The guy is drunk, that’s for sure, and just because he has eyes that make Louis want to lay him down and fuck him up-

Louis shakes his head, trying to clear his head. This is not rational. Zayn is at home, waiting for his milk that Louis was supposed to be buying, and instead he’s rushing down the street after a drunken stranger with pretty eyes. Lost in his train of thought, Louis almost doesn’t notice when Green Eyed Boy suddenly ducks off the pavementand hurries down the stairs to the club. Before Louis can catch up, the boy has disappeared inside the club and Louis is left on the street, torn between wanting to find out more about the boy with the eyes and giving up and going home.

Louis thinks back to the way the boy’s rough voice had wound itself around his senses, the gravel of it grating against his ears. He thinks maybe he’d like to hear that voice again, if only to clear it out of his head once and for all.

Without even thinking, Louis hurries down the steps and into the club. A wall of noise hits him in the face and he staggers into the club, heat and sound assaulting him from all sides, an overload of sensation that swirls around him. The club, while low key, is bustling with people, the bar three people deep and buzzing. There’s an empty stage at the front of the club, with a lone piano in the center.  _Must be performance night_ , he thinks distractedly as he cranes around in search of the boy he ran in here after.

What is he even expecting to happen? To walk up to this guy and tell him that his eyes make Louis come undone? That they open him up and splay out his insides for the world to see? Or does he want the guy to say  _fuck you_  to him too, so Louis can stop pretending like those eyes are the eyes of an angel? It’s in Louis’s nature to be pulled in by nice hair and pretty eyes and every single time, all his laughs and charisma and jokes only lead to hurried fucking in the upstairs room of someone’s house, harsh breathing punctuated by the distant and thumping bass of the music.

Maybe he can just get this kid to come home with him, fuck him on their paint-splattered floor and watch his cheeks flush and be done with him. If only he could find him in this godforsaken bar.

‘Excuse me, ladies and gentleman, excuse me.’ The din in the club quiets down and everyone in the place turns towards the stage, Louis included. A thin, nervous looking man is standing with a microphone, one hand twitchily playing with the bottom of his shirt. He glances over to the side of the stage as he clears his throat noisily. Louis rolls his eyes.

‘Tonight, we have the pleasure of live music by Harry Styles, a pianist from England. Please put your hands together for this young man.’ The balding man shuffles his feet nervously, eyes darting towards the stage wings, and rushes through the few last words. What the hell is wrong with this guy?

And then it all makes sense, as Green-Eyed Boy stalks out on stage, his hair in a wild disarray and his eyes dark with what Louis knows to be alcohol. Harry. Harry, Harry, Harry. The sound of it is like music to Louis’s ears. Harry Styles. God, what a name. Wait, a pianist? A drunk pianist?

Now Louis knows why the bald man was so nervous. He had a drunk Green Eyed Boy (Harry, Harry, Harry) glaring at him from the wings, a  _fuck you_  on the tip of his tongue, most likely.

The crowd claps half-heartedly and goes back to talking loudly, the noise in the club rising to its previous level.  Louis knows he must look like an idiot, sitting on a barstool with his jaw on the floor. Harry Styles may have looked good on the street corner, he may have looked like a god, but now Louis is seeing him in a black shirt and black pants and he’s tall and lean and fit, Louis can tell. His curls hang over his forehead and his eyes seem black in his face, hooded and intense, the line of jaw pulsing with the taut muscles.

Louis moves up through the crowd until he’s only two tables away from the stage. There’s no fear of Harry recognizing him. He’s drunk, painfully so, and Louis is surprised again by the pity he felt the first night he saw Harry Styles on the street corner. This isn’t who Harry Styles used to be, Louis can tell.

Harry stares out at the crowd. He stands by the edge of the piano and his face seems set, determined, and pissed off. He’s glaring at everyone in the pub, almost as if he’s daring them to continue to ignore him. Louis wants to stand on the table and shout  _hey, shut the fuck up, can’t you see he’s about to play?_        

Harry sits at the bench and places his hands on his thighs, head bent low. Louis can almost imagine that he’s giving himself a pep talk in his head. There’s nothing quite like the sight of the long white neck curved gracefully towards the piano and a small shiver runs through Louis as he imagines that neck held taut with tension, as it was in the convenience store.

And then he’s playing.

The muscles in Harry’s hands ripple across the sinew stretched over long, bony fingers and Louis’s pretty sure it’s the hottest thing he’s ever seen. His throat is dry as he watches the sway of Harry’s long lean back as he moves intensely over the keys, head bent like he’s praying and worshiping the gleaming black and white keys and Louis suddenly doesn’t find it hard to believe that Harry would bow down to the piano that holds him in its grasp, wouldn’t be surprised if he saw Harry whispering love into the sleek wood.  Harry’s eyes are closed, like he’s overwhelmed by his own music, with his dark lashes brushing against his cheekbones, the sharp cut of them tempting Louis to run a single finger down them and see if it would come away bloody with a small cut from the razor edges of his face. Harry’s dark curls are matted with sweat and hang low on his forehead, the pale expanse appearing and disappearing as he leans into the keys like he wants to push all his intensity into the notes, let them soak up the pulsing music that lives inside his fingertips, ready at any minute to explode in a firework of light and rhythm that rockets through Louis until he feels like Harry is playing right to him.

The noise level in the club hasn’t abated at all, but Louis can barely hear it, wrapped up in the bliss that is Harry’s playing. The sound of people talking is a low buzz, muted like he’s hearing it through a glass wall. He almost feels like he’s sitting in a cathedral with sky-high ceilings and echoing spaces, and he’s the only one there, sitting tucked up at the back, a lone witness watching the phenomenon that is Harry, the music the only thing slicing through a silence that makes time stand still. Louis looks up at him on the stage and he feels like he’s looking up at some unreal creature that belongs at the piano bench, a wild animal that looks unfinished and rough without his fingertips brushing delicately but strongly over the keys. The sleeves of his black shirt are rolled up to the elbows, the dark fabric contrasting wildly with the bone-white smoothness. The muscles in Harry’s forearms bunch and let go, the long pale lines making Louis’s throat constrict, make him want to trail a fingertip or his tongue up the white skin, trace the edges of the sharp muscles.

How are they not looking at him? How are there still people existing in this world who haven’t heard Harry play the piano? Why are the people in the club continuing on with their lives as if an unimaginable thing isn’t happening right in front of them? There’s a man in the corner, sipping from a sweating glass of whiskey, an iPhone in front of his face and his thinning hair and work suit seem average to Louis, who feels himself blessed to be in the presence of an extraordinary creature like Harry. This man’s apathy doesn’t belong in the same world as Harry’s intensity. He hasn’t even noticed what’s happening on the stage, he’s probably still thinking about his day at work, wondering what his wife is making for supper. A couple flirts and smiles shyly at each other, unaware that Louis’s life is changing before his eyes, the colors a little brighter and sharper.

The thrill of Harry’s music is coursing through his veins and Louis wants to run out in the snow and be cheesy and spin in a circle and scream to the heavens until his throat rips open, spilling his newly enlightened blood into the white dust on the streets, the red drops staining the pure snow so it too can feel the power Louis feels rushing through his veins at the sound of Harry playing the piano. The music is glossy and relentless, filling up the gaps in Louis’s unsatisfying life. It coats his bones, lights a fire in the pit of his stomach and his vision flashes red as he imagines running up on stage and pushing Harry into the keys, ripping open the black shirt and mouthing at the pulse that throbs at the base of Harry’s throat as he swallows around the music that chokes him as it tries to fall out of him.

Louis wants to whip around and yell  _listen to him,_   _why are you not listening, how are you not noticing?_  to the unobservant occupants of the club. They languish at the bar, their petty concerns the only things on their mind and Louis wants to shake them and yell at them, hold their faces and look into their apathetic eyes. He thinks maybe he could force them to watch Harry, make them witness this, dive into the unbelievable talent that Harry is demonstrating. He’s desperate for someone to feel as overwhelmed as he is, as blown away. It’s like everything Louis ever knew has been turned upside down, that raw underbelly of what he’s missing in life has been revealed and it’s terrifying and beautiful and he wants to live it, wants to know it. Harry’s awakened Louis’s desperation for whatever it is that drives Harry to commitment such an act of passion, such an incensed demonstration of his human power. Harry’s fingers fly over the ivory keys, like they have tiny wings, and Louis is struck by the ease with which he’s playing. His wide shoulders move with the rhythm, dipping and rocking, but he’s not struggling, far from it. The complexity of the music overwhelms Louis, the impossibility of such ability being possessed in one body, one person that at the moment is burrowing himself into every cell in Louis’s body and lighting every nerve on fire.

Harry looks like he was born on the piano bench, his first cry a G chord, like maybe his toys as a child were the hammers and strings inside the piano, like maybe he grew up inside the smooth expanse of glossy wood, a creature of the bark, a soul ensconced in the deep roots of an oak tree. His home is the piano and Louis can’t imagine how he thought Harry was human without the beautiful and rich wood all around him, the backdrop to Harry’s intensity. He wonders if Harry sees the world as ebony and ivory, if everything he touches seems to be lacking, compared to the smoothness of the keys that appear to be attached to his fingers.

He can see Harry’s frustration at being ignored; his jaw is clenched and his eyes look blacker than ever, open now and glaring at the empty music stand in front of him. Louis’s breath catches when he realizes Harry is playing from memory, the music streaming like ribbons through Harry’s mind, his fingers curling over the keys as if they’re writing the music as he sits there. Harry’s huge hands are trembling as they span the keys, easily reaching around the chords, and Louis’s bones quiver as he imagines Harry’s hands circling his waist, the long fingers fitting around his ribcage, able to break him, smash him into a thousand pieces for someone else to pick up, like so many people before him have done to Louis.

Louis thinks less than three minutes have passed in a state of exhilaration and breathlessness, a three minutes that feels like centuries, before suddenly the piano bench is crashing backwards, thumping onto the stage as Harry bolts straight up, his full height unfolding over the keys that he had just been just writhing over. Louis feels like he’s just been thrown out of a whirlwind, landing heavily on his feet, the sudden silence jarring him and bringing him back to Earth from the delicious ecstasy he was floating on. Harry whips his hair out of his eyes, the blackness boring into Louis standing there, gaping at the spectacle Harry is making on the stage. The room is quiet, every pair of eyes on Harry as he glares out at the crowd, eyes glassy and clenched fists trembling at his sides. His mouth looks bruised, the dark raspberry of it inviting and plush, a wide rose of color on the smoothness of Harry’s face, the perfection of it almost blinding Louis. The thundering echo of his playing has raced to the edges of the room and now silence lies in its place, the shocking suddenness of it and the loud crash of the bench stunning everyone into the room into looking at Harry.

‘I am playing.’

Harry’s voice is low, rough and hoarse. Between each word is a pause that Louis can imagine a  _fuck you_  fitting into perfectly. His voice is calm but underneath the seemingly harmless words, Louis can feel a rawness throbbing with arrogant rage that’s barely controlled under the surface. On the side of stage, Louis can see the thin nervous man shuffling his feet and swinging his arms, like he’s undecided if he should be hurrying out and leading Harry off the stage before he embarrasses the club anymore. Louis thinks he looks a little scared of Harry.  As Harry turns back towards the piano, the man quickly runs out and rights the bench just as Harry reaches him. The man cowers under the vicious glare Harry turns his way before he’s scurrying off stage again.

Harry sits at the bench and places those pale long fingers back on the keys. His back is ramrod straight, the muscles in his neck bulging as he holds himself still, waiting for the slight murmur that his statement ignited to die off. Suddenly he’s playing again, and it’s like the music hasn’t even stopped; he picks up in the exact same spot he left off at, no breaks or pauses or stumbling and Louis’s heart jumps in his throat as he feels himself being picked up and whirled right back into the tornado of Harry’s emotions that are jumping all over the piano. His playing is less controlled, it’s drunken and loose, his fingers flying in huge gestures and his body leaning towards the piano almost like he’s attacking the keys that he was so lovingly caressing before his outburst. Even the music feels louder and more powerful, crashing chords that carry across the now silent crowd. Louis can almost feel the rage and frustration that streams out of Harry in waves that hit Louis over and over again, the extremity of his emotions pounding into Louis until they feel like his own, until he feels like his and Harry’s emotions are one giant unfurling monster.

Louis’s pretty sure he’s having an out of body experience.

A delicious sense of satisfaction rolls over Louis as he realizes that every person in the room is now witnessing the incredible display on stage, a performance that is rolling with the emotions quivering under the surface of Harry’s music. Despite his satisfaction, Louis wants to take Harry away from the uncaring world, take him to a bare room and keep his music locked up for only to Louis to listen. The world is grey and Louis is grey, but Harry is red with passion and Louis knows he’s selfish enough to want that passion all for himself.

The song ends with a long rolling chord that thrums through Louis, starting in his toes and rushing up in a heat to the crown of his head. The echoing thrill resounds in Louis and throbs around the room, and Louis can almost imagine each note of the chord having its own personality, its own entity, a living and breathing part of the wild tapestry that Harry has woven with the music he holds inside of himself. A shiver passes through Louis as the tall length of Harry unfurls himself over the piano he just destroyed with his intensity, debased with his brutal display of passion. The piano looks defeated, a shell of what it was, a pale shadow of its former glory. All the unused beauty waiting inside the vessel of talent now exists in Harry, the chaotic tempest roiling through him as he walks off the stage, almost bouncing with what lives inside him now. It’s like Harry has soaked up the blistering storm, like he’s more alive than he’s ever been, lit up with the breathtaking performance. Louis feels drunk off the giddiness that seems to emanate in a shimmer that surrounds Harry as he crosses the stage and into the dark wings, disappearing from Louis’s sight.

Slight applause punctuates the still-shocked silence and then the low buzz of talking picks up again. Louis can hear more than one conversation concerning the spectacular display that Harry gave for everyone. He feels a sudden need, a desperation that pulls him out of his chair and through the crowd, pushing through the excited clusters in a struggle to get to the door before Harry disappears.

Louis suddenly bursts out onto the street, sliding a bit on the ice as he stumbles into a few people whogive him strange looks as they pass, unaware of the emotions and heat coiling in the pit of his belly, a raw desperation to find the curly headed boy who just changed Louis’s life, to find that lithe figure that made Louis feel more alive than he ever has.

The swirling snow makes it hard to see, but Louis scans for the curly hair, the black coat, anything. He doesn’t even know what he wants, just needs to see him one last time. He turns around the corner of the building and there, there he is.

Puking. Harry is in the alley on the other side of the building, hands on his knees and beanie pushed low on his forehead, the awful sound of retching filling the dark alley. He violently convulses, his knees knocking together and Louis watches in horror for 20 feet away, frozen, unable to do anything but watch him, the boy who just took Louis’s breath away.

Harry stands up and takes a couple of deep, rasping breaths before he lifts his eyes and he and Louis lock gazes, strangely reminiscent of their encounter the week before. The luminescent eyes that have been in Louis’s dreams for a week are no longer black, as they were on stage. They’re full of tears, the edges red, maybe with exhaustion, maybe with drunkenness, Louis doesn’t know. The green is blinding, just like Louis remembers.

This time, however, Harry breaks the gaze within seconds, turns on his heel and stalks off into the night, his shoulders hunched over, and his curls peeking out under the bottom of his beanie. His long back seems to taunt Louis, seems like a wordless  _fuck you_. Louis watches him go and wonders what he’s supposed to do with himself. 


	4. Chapter 3

‘I dunno, mate, it was like…like I woke up from a really long dream, y’know? That sounds so stupid, doesn’t it?’ Louis stirs his tea and memorizes the wood-grain on the table between them. They’re sitting in a restaurant on 8th Street, the same place they come every Saturday morning for waffles. The wails of crying children and hassled parents are somewhat soothing to the two boys, a nice contrast to the perpetual silence of their own apartment building. They sit next to the window and the bright sun flashes off the snow outside, blinding them and throwing patterns across the table and illuminating dust motes in the air.  The light glints off a dried syrup stain and Louis picks at it with his finger-nail, waiting for Zayn to laugh at him and tell him he’s daft.

‘No. It makes perfect sense. S’how I felt when I picked up a paintbrush for the first time,’ Zayn mumbles through his mouthful of waffles. ‘S’like in those movies when the angels are like ‘aaaaahhhhhh’, right?’

‘Sure. No. I don’t what the fuck that means, darling, but thank you for the support,’ Louis rolls his eyes and viciously stabs his pancakes, his mind still stuck on the night before when he witnessed Harry’s outburst at the club. The awesome thrill he experienced still sends a small shiver up his spine every time he thinks about it and when he got home the previous night, he was been unable to sleep, sitting at the kitchen table and staring out the window at the starless night.

It felt stereotypically cliché to be pondering what Harry Styles was doing, at 4 in the fucking morning, but Louis had pushed away the self-mocking voice that always sat on his shoulder and decided that the evening had been thought-provoking enough to justify acting like a love-struck teenager. And Louis knows it isn’t really love-struck he’s feeling, just a simple appreciation of talent. He’s always been somebody who was struck by talent, by Zayn’s talent, by Harry’s talent. Maybe it was why he’s so unsatisfied with his own talent: he’s jealous of other people’s passions.

As he sips his tea, Louis feels eyes on him and when he pulls his eyes up to Zayn, he has a contemplative look on his face as he considers Louis.

‘What?’ Louis asks, squirming under the concentrated gaze. Louis always felt like Zayn’s eyes were looking right through him, right through the bullshit and the jokes.

Zayn opens his mouth, closes it again and his dark eyebrows knit together worriedly. If Louis didn’t know any better, he’d say that Zayn was looking at him with pity. But what did Zayn have to pity Louis about? Louis knew his personal life was a little out of the ordinary, what with his cavalier disregard for commitment, but he and Zayn had discussed this. During the first few months they were friends, there were many nights spent huddled with a bottle of alcohol and their secrets swirling around them. They laid bare their souls for each other, seeking comfort in somebody else knowing everything about them.There were maybe a few drunken nights finding out a little bit more than they needed to know, a few mistakes of lonely hearts and curious hands and stifled moans from reluctant lips, but that was how Zayn and Louis worked, balancing on the brink of friendship and a little bit more, teetering between two seemingly bottomless chasms.

That’s how they are; it was the only way they can function together. Zayn sees the bottom of Louis’s heart and he accepts him for it, something a lot of people can’t do when they catch a glimpse of the shattered depths of all that confusion and shit that lies in Louis. Knowing that, Louis doesn’t know why Zayn would be looking at him like this, as if there is something important that’s passing Louis by, and Zayn is waiting for him to realize it.

‘Are you happy?’ Zayn asks quietly.

Louis blinks and considers this. Is he happy? He has Zayn, his sisters and mum. He has acting, but if he’s honest with himself, acting doesn’t make him as happy as it used to. Is happiness drunkenly dancing on tables at clubs and falling into bed with faceless strangers? Is it making jokes to hide the cracks in his armor?

Louis has to guess that if it came down to it, he probably isn’t very happy.

‘I don’t know,’ he says after a very long silence. ‘I don’t know,’ he repeats, looking up at Zayn. Zayn just nods and doesn’t respond and Louis thinks that probably wasn’t what Zayn was hoping to hear.

——————————————————————————————————-

When Louis was 12, someone called him a faggot and he had to go home and look it up. The internet yielded answers and Louis cried himself to sleep that night and then swore he didn’t give a fuck what everyone said. The next day at school, he walked up to the boy who’d called him the name and kissed him. Predictably, the boy was shocked and his fist had come out of nowhere, leaving Louis with a purple eye and bruised pride.

Louis didn’t let things lie. He held grudges, he remembered things. His famous bite hid a smoldering rage that stayed in his belly until he acted on it, until he evened things out. Louis had to react, had to do something about it, and usually his reaction to things was much more heated than the situation perhaps required.

When he told his parents the whole story, his mother cried. His father looked on and didn’t say anything and then walked out of the room. At the time, Louis hadn’t understood, and thought that his father was simply disappointed that he had been in a fight. That was ok, Louis’s childishly naïve mind thought, because boys were supposed to be able to fight and he had been knocked to the ground, so it was only expected that his father was ashamed of him being a sissy.

When he was 13, a new boy was in Louis’s class. His name was Nigel. Louis came home from school and told his mother about Nigel and he said Nigel had nice eyes and Louis thought he was pretty. His mother had only smiled and ruffled his hair, but his dad got a mean look in his eye and spat out ‘you unnatural little boy, don’t say things like that. I don’t need a fag as a son.’

That, plus a series of other events throughout the years, meant Louis didn’t really talk to his father much after that.

Now his parents are divorced and Louis hasn’t talked to his dad in years, except at holidays, when his dad phones, probably out of guilt. Last Christmas, his dad called and chatted happily with the girls and hadn’t asked to speak to Louis. Phoebe, in all her innocence, chirped into the phone ‘but daddy, don’t you want to talk to Lou?’ And the conversation consisted of awkwardly exchanged greetings and inquiries over how Juilliard was. Louis’s skin crawled the entire time and he couldn’t wait to get off the phone so he could go and hug his mother and be glad she hadn’t written him off.

The complete deterioration of Louis’s relationship with his father was why now, a week after the Harry incident, when Jay calls to say Mark wanted the girls for Christmas, Louis’s heart sinks to the bottom of his toes.

‘I’m really sorry, honey,’ Jay’s voice soothes over the phone line, sadness lacing every word. ‘You know how long it’s been since the girls saw him.’

‘Yeah, no, it’s fine. I’ll just stay with you in Doncaster.’ Louis sighs. He was really looking forward to this Christmas; his sisters are finally at the age where spending time with them wasn’t babysitting, but actually visiting and Lottie has been keeping him informed about a certain boy and he wants to know more. As the oldest, Louis has always felt such a responsibility for his sisters, to be that brother that they looked up to. Most of the time he feels like he was disappointing them for being away so much of the time, for starting his own life and having it not be in England. Coming home itself was a little bit like Christmas, with the girls running down the driveway and clutching his legs, Jay standing on the doorstep with a small smile on her face and her arms wide open. Tears prick Louis’s eyes as he imagines his sisters sitting on the floor of his dad’s flat, opening their presents that Louis shipped to England in the beginning of the month. He would miss the looks of excitement on Daisy and Phoebe’s faces when they opened their American Girl dolls and the thought that he wouldn’t be there to see their features light up with joy makes something in his chest hurt a little bit.

On the phone, Jay clears her throat awkwardly and Louis knows it wasn’t the end of the disappointments.

‘Actually, Boo, Nancy and I were going to spend the break in Florence…you know, change of scenery?’ Jay says apologetically. ‘But you know, I can still cancel my flight plans, it’s not too late! I just thought maybe you and Zayn would enjoy New York at Christmas-time together.’

Louis considers it. Christmas with his mother, sitting around drinking tea and looking at old family scrapbooks and seeing childhood friends from school. Or Christmas with Zayn, a depressing showcase of the elasticity of Louis’s ability to not give a shit about anything, a night spent drowning his loneliness in alcohol and culminating in throwing up on their front step and slipping into bed with Zayn, ghosting his lips on his collarbone and wishing he and Zayn could love each other properly so that at least he’d have one person to count on.

‘Sure, mum, Zayn and I will have a good Christmas here; we’ll go ice-skating at Rockefeller!’ If Louis was being honest with himself, he would realize that his mother could probably hear the sharp-edged misery in his voice and wasn’t buying his forced cheeriness, but he manages to convince himself that she wouldn’t notice.

‘That’s great, Lou, I’m sure you guys will have a lot of fun, and you’ll be home in no time. February isn’t that long away!’ Jay replies breezily and Louis’s heart constricts a little bit when he realizes maybe his mum hasn’t sensed the bitterness under the surface of Louis’s overly-bright voice. ‘Anyways, I have to go, Nancy and I are going Christmas-shopping, but I’ll call you on Christmas Eve, alright? Love you!’

The phone line goes dead before Louis can even respond with a ‘love you too’ and he stares at the lit up screen of his phone, the dial tone beeping softly into the silent room, a mocking reminder of the distance from home. The room all of a sudden feels tiny and suffocating.

‘Lou?’ Zayn’s voice floats out from his bedroom down the hall. He sounds scratchy and sleep-worn and it tugs on Louis’s heartstrings and maybe staying in New York with Zayn won’t be so bad. They could stay in, eat Chinese food and smoke weed and maybe Louis would finally let Zayn paint him, like he’s always begging to. Louis would look at him with hooded eyes, watching Zayn moving behind the canvas, and Louis would wish Zayn was painting love on that canvas.

He pads down the hall and peeks in Zayn’s room; the curtains are flung wide open, the silver moon laying a stripe across the wooden floors. Zayn is lying rumpled in the sheets, his tattoos glowing starkly in the moonlight and his hair soft and falling across his face.

‘Hey, babe’ Zayn smiles softly at Louis and Louis hurts a little bit because he doesn’t deserve somebody like Zayn, doesn’t deserve someone who will just let him in their bed because his own bed is too cold, too empty.

Louis crosses the room, his bare feet making no noise on the floor, and slips into bed next to Zayn, breathing in the smoky warmth of Zayn’s bare body. The heat radiates off him and Louis slumps into it, soaking it up, and trying to make himself as small as possible to fit on the bed. Fingers stroke feathers into the skin exposed between the bottom of Louis’s shirt and the waistband of his pajama pants and Louis buries his nose in the warm skin at Zayn’s collarbone. He smells like laundry detergent and cigarette smoke and the stupidly expensive cologne he wears. He also smells like home, but Louis doesn’t think that because he’s emotional right now, but he’s not a sap.

‘M’not going to Doncaster for Christmas anymore,’ Louis mumbles into Zayn’s neck. His head moves up and down with Zayn’s breath and the soft rocking motion lulls Louis dangerously close to sleep.

‘I heard.’

‘Can we have a snowball fight on Christmas Day?’

Zayn shifts underneath him and doesn’t say anything, his heartbeat a soft staccato under Louis’s cheek.

Louis lifts his head and sets his chin on Zayn’s chest, staring at him in the dark. Zayn doesn’t look at him; he looks up at the ceiling and the curve of his eyelashes casts long shadows into the hollows under his eyes, hollows Louis knows to be purple from sleepless nights spent throwing paint at canvases.

‘Lou, I’m going home,’ Zayn says quietly into the darkness and of course, Louis should’ve known. Of course Zayn isn’t staying in New York. He has sisters too and he has a home other than Louis. But Louis has been so caught up thinking about his own lonely Christmas that he hasn’t even considered the fact that Zayn might not be content with skyscrapers and America for the holidays, that maybe he would want small town and family. But of course he would, that’s what Louis wants, that’s why he’s so disappointed about not going home.

Louis doesn’t really have the strength to respond to Zayn. Not right now, anyways. He doesn’t even want to whine, doesn’t want to give Zayn any more reason to leave him. He sighs and shifts so more of his weight is resting on Zayn and brushes his lips against the delicate skin in the hollow of Zayn’s chest, laying soft kisses all the way up to the column of his throat and then mouthing gently at the corner of his lips. He hopes Zayn can’t see the glint of tears in his eyes, can’t feel the soft wetness on his chest.

‘Lou…’ Zayn just sighs and moves Louis so he’s cradled under his arm and Louis blinks his eyes to keep back the tears welling up in the corners of his eyes. It shouldn’t matter so much, not going home for Christmas, Zayn leaving him. He’s always been left or always done the leaving. Maybe it’s the security of darkness covering him, like the harsh light of day has been stripped, leaving all his insecurities and vulnerabilities lying naked on the floor, formless shadows in the corner of the dark room. Louis’s not stupid; he doesn’t pretend like he’s unbreakable, knows that one day someone’s going to crack him open and see all the loneliness. But he likes to think maybe that sadness is buried so deep within him that it’ll take a couple hundred years to find, maybe take an archaeologist with a magnifying glass. If Louis imagined his heart as an excavation site, he say that maybe in the first few layers, there would be a bit of pain and a little bit of confusion, but mostly just a lot of shit. It’s not until a couple feet down, couple hundred years, that someone, anyone, might find the abandonment.

Zayn’s soft breathing measures out until Louis knows he’s asleep. If he was smart, Louis would get out of Zayn’s bed and go back to his own, take himself away from the temptation of begging Zayn to love him. Louis’s not known for taking his own advice, though, so he tucks his cold hands inside his sleeves and burrows more deeply into Zayn’s side. Zayn’s arm instinctively curls tighter around him and Louis forces himself not to imagine what it would be like if he could love Zayn, if Zayn could love him back and they could just be ZaynandLouis and there wouldn’t be all those faceless boys they bring home, all the pain of wanting somebody to care and only having each other.

Harry’s face appears in Louis’s mind and he squeezes his eyes shut, willing himself not to think about the curly haired boy. His face has been haunting the edges of Louis’s consciousness for a week now, brought alive every night as Louis shamefully sits in the back of the club and lets Harry flip his world upside down, night after night. Louis tries to reconcile Harry and Zayn in his mind and all he sees is Zayn as comfort and security and Harry as a cold bed and abandonment. He knows boys like Harry; there are scars that you can see, scars that Louis himself has. As someone afraid of commitment, Louis knows perfectly well when he’s looking at another person that walks away.

 And Harry Styles walks away, walks away from the club every night, heading off into the wintry cold like a figure from a mystery novel. He’s an enigma and in all Louis’s musing about him that he’s done, he hasn’t been able to pick out one thing about Harry Styles that he might know for sure and that bothers Louis. All he knows is the curve of Harry’s back as he walks away. He usually looks at a person and senses their flaws, knows their insecurities. And with Harry, all that emotion was so present on his face, and yet Louis couldn’t make sense of it, couldn’t figure out where Harry was coming from with all that emotion.

Most of all, Louis can’t figure out his own emotions about Harry. The majority of the time he seems unreal, like he’s a figment of Louis’s imagination, and yet every night that figment is there, long fingers stretching and pulling at those keys, curly hair sticking to the sweat on the nape of his neck. Every night for seven days, something in Louis’s belly twists and curls in on itself with a small fire and he has to leave quickly, go home for a hot shower. He stands in the shower, one hand curled around himself, his mind full of fingers and hair and arms and music, and he brings himself off, coming harder than ever, with the thought of those lips wrapped around his cock.

So Harry Styles is still a mystery, still something Louis wants to figure out, but for now he has his mind full of abandonment and Zayn and sadness and the familiar smell of Zayn’s sheets and the calming sound of the snow drifting against the window. He comforts himself with the way Zayn sleepily fists a hand in Louis’s t-shirt, the way their ankles brush together just enough to be soft and friendly.

‘Go to sleep, Lou,’ Zayn whispers in Louis’s ear. His hand moves up to gently scratch at the soft baby hairs that lie behind Louis’s ears and sighs out a warm breath across Louis’s face, mint and cigarette smoke and something indistinguishably Zayn.

In the dark room, the two broken boys lie holding each other, each wishing for the same thing, for someone to care and to want and to need. Instead they grasp each other like life-rafts and Louis falls asleep with an arm around him that doesn’t feel quite right, but it’s all he has right now. 


	5. Chapter 4

‘‘Zayn, can you please shut your suitcase?’ Louis whines. ‘It’s hurting my eyes.’ He sounds like a petulant child, but the sight of Zayn’s suitcase steadily filling up with presents for his sisters and red jumpers with reindeer on them is making something twist unpleasantly in Louis’s stomach.

  
He’s lounging across Zayn’s unmade bed, trying not to seem affected as Zayn methodically works his way around the room. He’s been entertaining himself with asking for the meanings behind all the vibrant canvases that embellish the walls of Zayn’s room. Louis knows Zayn only shares these stories with him.  
  
‘Lou, for godsakes, I’m going to be gone for like 5 days,’ Zayn snaps good-naturedly at Louis. Louis sticks his tongue out and snuggles further into the pillow, breathing in the crisp and fruity smell of Zayn’s hair-gel that’s been soaked into the fabric.  
  
‘Yeah, but what if I starve?’ Louis pouts. He kicks his feet into the air and lets them thump back on the bed. Does it again. Zayn glares at him and Louis throws him the finger.  
  
‘Well, learn how to make some macaroni then,’ Zayn throws over his shoulder as he stands at his dresser and contemplates which hair products to bring back. Louis watches him and snickers at the thoughtful look on his face.  
  
‘Zayn, darling, just bring all the products, you never know who you might run into,’ Louis says.  
  
‘Just because I actually care how I look…’ Zayn trails off and looks knowingly at Louis’s plaid pyjama bottoms and a ratty t-shirt that actually belongs to Zayn. Louis’s hair is soft and unstyled, lying flat snd wispy against his head and Zayn finds that he likes Louis’s hair better when it’s not so artfully styled, like his own.  
  
Louis flushes. ‘You dick, keep this up and I won’t drive you to the airport anymore,’ Louis bites out, but Zayn can hear the laugh beneath his words. Louis sits up and swings his legs off the bed, banging his heels on the wooden frame just to piss Zayn off. ‘You’ll have to lug all those suitcases full of hairspray onto the train and some old homeless man is going to steal your Gucci mousse and there will be a quiffed homeless man running around the streets of New York. And you will regret being rude to me.’  
  
‘Whatever you say, Lou,’ Zayn laughs and closes his drawers. ‘Alright, I think that’s everything.’ He turns around and laughs at the sight on the floor.  
  
Louis is sitting inside his suitcase, on top of all the clothes that Zayn has carefully folded. His legs are crossed and he looks a bit like an eight year old. An eight year old with a drinking problem and separation anxiety, but an eight year old nonetheless.  
  
‘Zayn, honey, darling, sweet pea, angel, light of my life…take me with you?’ Louis clasps his hands together and sticks his lower lip out at Zayn.  
  
‘Cute, Lou, but no. Get up, you’re crushing my jumpers.’ Zayn gently smacks his hand across Louis’s head, prompting an over-dramatic screech to fall out of Louis’s mouth as he tumbles backwards, groaning about his concussion. Zayn ignores him.  
  
‘Go get dressed, you annoying lovable person, my flight’s at 2 and I’m not saying goodbye to you when you’re wearing those awful bottoms.’

—————————————————————————-  
  
‘Flight to London, Gate 3, now boarding.’ The crackly sound of the woman’s voice of the speaker reverberates in Louis’s chest and if he was in the mood to be dramatic, he would say that it tugs at his heart. Louis tries not to look at Zayn because what if he drags Zayn out of the airport and puts him in the trunk and takes him back to the flat because goddamnit how is Louis supposed to spend five days by himself?  
  
‘That’s me, babe’, Zayn pulls him in for a hug and tucks Louis’s head under his chin. The rough stubble on his jawline scrapes Louis’s forehead. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be back on the 27th, it’s not that long.’  
  
‘You’re going to see your family, I’m going to be drunk and eating Chinese food and watching Miracle on 24th Street,’ Louis mumbles into Zayn’s throat. His hands twist in the bottom of Zayn’s t-shirt under his leather coat and Zayn has his thumbs in the belt loops of Louis’s dark green skinny jeans, fingers splayed across the small of his back. Louis can feel the heat from Zayn’s hands burning through his thin t-shirt. ‘Who am I going to pull a cracker with?’  
  
‘That old lady on the 5th floor?’ Zayn chuckles and the vibrations ripple from his chest into Louis’s and Louis breathes in the smell of stale smoke and cologne and worn leather that is so indefinably Zayn.  
  
‘Shut up.’ Louis lets his lips ghost across the tanned skin in the hollow of Zayn’s throat. He refuses to contemplate the way he hears Zayn’s pulse against his ear.  
  
‘I have to go,’ Zayn says, but he doesn’t loosen his arms around Louis and Louis is glad. They stand there for a few minutes more, breathing in the smell of each other until Louis feels Zayn sigh deeply into his hair and pull back, brushing a soft kiss across Louis’s hairline. Louis can feel an imprint of a button on his cheek.  
  
‘It’s gonna be fine, Lou, I promise. I’ll be back soon, don’t eat all the cake, there’re frozen dinners in the freezer, don’t get too drunk and don’t smoke too much, you know what that shit does to your brain cells, and you don’t have many left to work with,’ Zayn smiles at Louis, half a smile really.  
  
‘You should talk, your room smells awful, I’m going to clean the whole place and when you get back you won’t even recognize it.’  
  
‘You will not, don’t be absurd,’ Zayn chuckles and slings his bag up on his shoulder. ‘Alright, seriously I have to go. I’ll text you when I land, ok?’ He leans forward and plants a big wet kiss on Louis’s cheek, making him laugh and scrub the spit off his cheek.  
  
‘Get out of here,’ Louis swats him on the bum and sends him off towards the gate. ‘Don’t fuck too many girls in Bradford!’

An old couple boarding looks at him, scandalized.

‘AND BRING ME BACK A PRESENT, YOU FUCKER!’ He sees Zayn’s tall quiff turn around and he mouths the words ‘love you’ and  it could have been a ‘fuck you’, but he chooses to believe it was a ‘love you’ because that makes the abandonment a little less harsh.  
  
20 minutes later as Louis stands in line for a coffee, he gets a text from Zayn.  
  
'And don't stalk that piano guy aha :) love you xx'  
  
Louis rolls his eyes.

————————————————-  
  
It’s not that Louis is going to be alone for his favorite holiday. It’s not, really. He can deal with calling his sisters on Christmas Day and having that be his only connection to them. He can deal with having his mum call him and hear her tinkly laugh because she’s enjoying herself so much, and he’ll listen to her blather on about the old churches in Florence and the lush valleys, and he’ll be happy for her, because that’s what he does.  
  
And yes, Louis is a social person, but he can find people at any club with pretty boys and yummy drinks that cost too much for Louis’s thin wallet. Louis ignores the small voice in his head that says destroyed boys under blue lights in clubs are not people to be friends with, they are people who exist to destroy Louis and be destroyed by him. Louis is so attracted to the distance in a club, the almost obligation to not give a fuck about the emotions of your dance partner, or the kid with his mouth around your cock in the toilets. It’s common courtesy not to care, when you’re at a club. And everyone knows that’s what Louis does best.  
  
No, the reason Louis dreads being by himself is now there really is no one to stop him from going to see Harry Styles. Louis is refusing to label it as an obsession, but really, there’s no tiptoeing around the fact that Louis has gone to see the boy play piano almost every night since he first saw him play.  
  
 At least when Zayn was around, Louis could keep himself from going to the club because he knew Zayn would ask where he was going, and if he told Zayn the truth, out would come that sad smile of Zayn’s, the one laced with pity, the one that Louis knows means Zayn wishes he would get his life together.  
  
Louis wishes that too. But it’s not that strong of a wish, which is how he finds himself lying on the floor of their flat, eating Rocky Road ice cream at 5 in the afternoon on the 23rd of December. The flat is cold, because Louis couldn’t be bothered to get up on a chair and turn up the heat. That was always Zayn’s job, he could reach it. Louis doesn’t want to admit that he isn’t tall enough, so instead he just wraps up in blankets and hoodies and makes a fort in front of the TV. He’s wearing a sweat-shirt of Zayn’s because all of his are dirty and also because it smells like Zayn and Louis would be lying if he said that wasn’t comforting.  
  
Louis was up at 7 this morning. He was too cold in his own bed and in a half-asleep daze, decided to go and sleep with Zayn, whereupon he woke up completely and remembered Zayn was gone. And then he lay awake in Zayn’s bed, playing Words with Friends, wrapped up in Zayn’s blankets, and contemplating just how drunk he could get on the meager supply of alcohol stashed in their flat. Drunk enough to pass out for the next 3 days? It was out of the question to venture outside: it was too cold, his shoes were too far away, his clothes were too dirty, and there was enough Ramen in the pantry to last him until the 27th when Zayn got home.  
  
All those decisions led to the fort-building and ice cream-eating pity fest that Louis is hosting on the floor. Oprah is on. Louis finds Oprah very soothing. She listens to him.  
  
Louis is bored out of his mind. The incessant ticking of the clock in the kitchen feels like a time-bomb counting down the seconds until Louis runs out of sanity. His hair is greasy and flat and he has drunk his weight in tea. He smoked weed out the window until his nose got too cold and the old man on the balcony above him kept yelling things at him. He wants Zayn to be here, sitting in the corner of the apartment brooding over a blue circle while Friends is on in the background, drowned out by whatever strange operatic music was Zayn’s choice that week, and Louis wanders around, not doing his homework.  
  
Louis doesn’t function well when Zayn isn’t here, he’s realizing.  
  
He wants to get drunk. His spoon is scraping the bottom of the tub of ice cream and Louis hasn’t felt this pathetic since the one-night stand where he woke up and saw a note from the previous night’s partner, saying ‘don’t call’.  
  
Louis grabs his phone from the coffee table and scrolls through his contacts…Cher, Matt, Jerad, Eleanor, Stan… He could call Stan but he is most likely enjoying a comfortable afternoon with his family in Doncaster, being all happy and content and social, all the things Louis is not at that moment. Bastard.  
  
Louis scrolls through his phone, bypassing Zayn’s name with a twinge he refuses to recognize as ‘missing him’.  
  
Aiden? Aiden was another drama student, but unlike Louis, he was actually passionate about it, dedicated to the point of giving Louis a headache every time he waxed poetic about Shakespeare. The boy was always willing for a good time, though.  
  
’ _Hello?_ ’  
  
'Aiden, mate, it's Louis.' Loius presses the phone between his shoulder and his ear and flops back into his nest of blankets.  
  
’ _Tommo, my man, how are you doing? What’s your lonely ass doing calling me the day before Christmas_?’ Aiden sounds loud and joyful and a tad drunk, and Louis blesses his good judgement that Aiden would be able to cure his loneliness.  
  
'Oh you know, the usual… Lying around being lonely. You still in New York?' Louis crosses his fingers that Aiden hasn't gone home to Boston.  
  
’ _Yeah, man, my dad’s fucked off with that whore, Kylie or Molly or whatever the fuck. My moms at home crying up a storm, I’m not going home to that shit,’_  Aiden snorts into the phone. Louis can hear music and yelling from Aiden’s side of the phone; he hears Aiden yell to someone near him ‘ _fuck yes, more shots_!’ Aiden will do the trick just perfectly.  
  
Aiden’s family is, to say the least, fucked up and wealthy. In Louis’s experience with all the rich kids that go to Juilliard, those two things go hand in hand. Louis is well aware of the fact that his own family is fucked up, but lacking the wealthy aspect of that partnership of ideals.  
  
’ _Tommo, man, you still in the city? Come on out! Bring that kid who’s always high! Zach, or whatever the fuck! Come show New York how to celebrate Christmas the right way!_ ' Aiden is shouting into the phone loud enough that Louis has to pull the phone away from his ear, but he's grinning because he knew he could always count on Aiden. This is exactly what he needs. Something strong and murderous that will knock him out until the 27th when Zayn gets home.  
  
'Aid, just tell me an address and I'm there.'

* * *  
The music thumps through Louis’s chest and he’s in his element. Total insanity, sloshing glasses of alcohol, and a whole slew of pretty boys to dance with. When he got there, Aiden had thrust something bright and deadly looking at him, and how much time had passed between now and then, Louis is not sure. What he does know is that whoever’s pressed up behind him has his hands on Louis’s waist and they’re creeping under his shirt, and Louis is drunk enough that it seems like a good idea to want to fuck a stranger in a club bathroom the day before Christmas. He turns around to get a good look at the guy, who’s much taller than Louis and is leering down at him in a way Louis recognizes very well.  
  
The alcohol is singing in Louis’s veins, his head rushing. The lights glitter and light up the dance floor at different intervals, illuminating writhing bodies that dance in desperation. Louis knows every person there must be as fucked up as he is, or else why would they be at a club on the 23rd of December? Or is it Christmas already? Is it past Christmas? Louis doesn’t even know anymore. But he recognizes the look in the eyes of people around him, wide and overwhelmed with lust and probably drugs and the small sober part of his brain tells him he should be ashamed to be with these people, that this isn’t Louis Tomlinson.  _But it is_ , the truthful drunk part of him thinks sadly. Louis thinks of Zayn’s pity smile with the jagged edges.  
  
But then the boy (man?) is taking Louis by the hand and leading him through the roiling masses of people. Drinks spill on Louis (fuck you, these are really nice pants, you fuckhead) and he’s pretty sure someone grabs his bum on the way by (how polite of you, coulda just asked, asshole) but his fingers are tightly clenched in the man’s hand until they’re in the back of the club, with half-naked people moving against the walls, lips and hands everywhere in a dance Louis feels dirty witnessing. Then again, he’s following a stranger into a filthy bathroom so he can get on his knees. Stupid blowjobs, they’re murder on nice pairs of trousers. Knees worn thin. A lot of his trousers have worn knees. Anyways, does he have the right to judge? Probably not.  
  
Louis is just about to duck into the bathroom when a figure at the end of the bar catches his eye. A dark halo of hair is glowing, lit up from behind with blue flashing lights. Louis knows even without the light illuminating the boy’s face that it’s Harry Styles and of course he’s at the same club as Louis, of course he’s part of the fucked-up population that feels the need to get so drunk they don’t even know what day it is anymore. Harry is leaning over a girl with long blonde hair that he keeps pushing over her shoulder as he moves his head in, whispering in her ear. His smile is slow and seductive and Louis’s drunk enough that he’s not embarrassed at the way something flips over in his stomach at the sight of those red lips curling into something that’s not a smirk or a sneer or a frown.  
  
Harry’s torso is long and lean. His collarbones are deep caves with jutting out points, and necklaces hang into a plain white t-shirt that’s stretched down past his clavicle. One arm is resting on the bar counter, and the lights reflect off the glassy marble, painting it blue and then red and Louis gets dizzy at the sight of the lights curling on those long fingers that Louis has been having filthy thoughts about for weeks now. Harry’s legs are long, encased in black jeans, too tight and yet not tight enough. One long thigh is pushing in between the girl’s legs.  
  
The man’s fingers are tugging at Louis’s fingers again and Louis yanks at them, pulling the man off his feet. Louis has changed his mind. He doesn’t want to fuck this guy in the bathroom. He wants to dance with Harry Styles.  
  
The man disappears into the crowd after viciously spitting out ‘fine, faggot’ but Louis doesn’t even care as he stumbles over to where Harry and the blonde girl are sitting.  
  
'Can I help you?' Harry looks over at Louis, his eyebrows knitted together in a way that Louis refuses to think is adorable. His eyes are glowing bright green, flecks of gold dancing under the lights and Louis feels his head spin at the glittering of his eyes under the flashing bar lights, long eyelashes casting deep shadows onto his sharp cheekbones. Louis feels small under his towering height and finds that he likes it.  
  
'Dance with me?' Louis can sort of hear himself slurring but he tries to stand up as tall as possible and stares into Harry's green eyes.  
  
Harry looks him up and down. Louis feels exposed as Harry’s gaze rakes along his torso, taking him in. Louis shivers; it’s like his green eyes have x-ray vision or something; Louis wants to look down and make sure he’s not standing there, skin peeled back, heart and bones on display for the introspective gaze of the boy in front of him. When Harry looks back up at Louis, he’s smirking and it’s the kind of smirk where he knows Harry appreciates what he sees, but he’s still facing a rejection.  
  
'I don't think so, darling. I'd fuck you in a heartbeat, but Annabell here has already got my dick in her hand, so looks like she beat you to it,' Harry says cheekily, grinning away.  
  
His voice is deep and gravelly like Louis remembers, slowly rasping out and sending shivers into Louis down to his toes. A dimple pops out and Louis wants to slap Harry for looking so beautiful and pretty, but being such a shithead. His red lips are shaped in a bow, the little dip of his upper lip so enticing, Louis just wants to take it in his teeth and tug until Harry is beneath him whimpering. Louis drunkenly thinks that with his red lips and green eyes and wild hair, Harry looks a bit like Snow White. Louis looks down at Harry’s crotch, where sure enough, the blonde’s girl’s slim hand has disappeared down the front of his trousers.  
  
Louis flushes bright red. ‘Wasn’t asking for a fuck, just a dance. You’re awfully full of yourself,’ he sneers at Harry. Louis has known before that he doesn’t like himself when he’s drunk, but that’s not stopping him from curling his lip and narrowing his eyes at the young boy who seems so confident of himself. Doesn’t matter how attractive the boy is, Louis’s not some plaything, the kid should be fucking ecstatic that Louis has made the effort to ask him to dance. ‘You’re pretty, kid, but I don’t need to fuck a 15 year old to feel good about myself.’  
  
Harry blinks once, twice, his eyelashes brushing those pale cheeks, and then he rips Annabell’s hand out of his trousers and steps closer to Louis. He lowers his mouth to Louis’s ear and Louis shivers as warm breath curls around his ear, tickling the sensitive shell. Annabell’s mouth has dropped open, Louis notices, gleefully.  
  
'Alright, let's dance.' He takes Louis's hand and leads him onto the dance floor and wraps huge hands onto Louis's hips, rocking his crotch into Louis's ass. Louis bites back a moan and reaches up behind him to thread his fingers through Harry's hair and pulls hard, and this time it's Harry groaning into Louis's ear, his breath hot, smelling like alcohol and something sweet. Harry mouths at Louis's neck, panting hard and the sound of his labored breathing is making Louis's already-tight jeans grow tighter. The blood is rushing through Louis's veins and he wants to take this boy and show him that Louis's not some desperate pathetic kid, that Harry doesn't get to be all sneer-y and beautiful and unattainable because Louis can have whoever the fuck he wants and he wants Harry.  
  
Louis twists in Harry’s arms until they’re chest to chest, moving together with no space in between them. He snakes his hands up and down Harry’s spine, caressing the vertebrae that protrude from beneath his thin t-shirt. Harry’s hands slide down till they’re grasping Louis’s ass, and  _wow his hands are big_.  
  
If Zayn were here right now, he would say ‘leave room for Jesus’ and waggle his finger in Louis’s direction. There’s no room for Jesus at a club, Louis thinks deliriously and pushes his crotch into the other boy’s, eliciting a broken grunt from Harry’s fallen-open mouth. He can’t believe he’s at a club grinding with the boy who’s been stalking the edges of his dreams for the past two weeks, the same boy whom Louis watched lean over the piano, much like how Harry is leaning over Louis now.  
  
When Louis pulls back and looks into Harry’s face, his eyes are dark and wide, pupils dilated and his mouth is red and wet and shiny with his teeth digging into his bottom lip. Louis wonders if this is what Harry’s face looks like when he gets fucked. That thought threatens to short-circuit his brain, so he shakes it off.  
  
Louis steps back. Harry staggers forward like he was leaning into Louis for support, and he’s no longer got a cocky grin on his face. He’s panting and staring at Louis, and Louis smirks at him, leans up to Harry’s ear and says,  
  
'That's all, darling, got what I wanted.'  
  
Harry leans back and stares down at him in disbelief.  
  
'W-what?' his voice breaks and he blushes and Louis thinks,  _that looks good on you. I want to make you blush all the time._  But he doesn’t say that out loud.  
  
'Sorry, pretty boy, Cinderella's gotta scamper,' Louis smirks at Harry, leans in, and closes his mouth on the hollow of Harry's throat. Harry's head falls backwards and he moans, deep and low and Louis can feel it vibrating through his mouth as he sucks messily on the pale white skin, tasting sweat in his tongue; the saltiness of it tastes bitter, and he can smell something he suspects might be a girl's perfume. He's jealous and licks a long stripe up Harry's throat. He bites at the forming bruise again, nipping at the thin skin with his teeth and he feels Harry whimper above him. Louis leans back, admiring his work. A beautiful red mark is spreading in the small hollow above the thin chains of Harry's necklace, splotchy and turning a purple-blue color as Louis looks at it. Harry's breathing shallowly, quickly, small gasps that go straight to Louis's crotch but he ignores it, and softly kisses the purple bruise at the base of Harry's throat, before turning around and weaving through the crowds.  
  
He looks back and Harry is still watching him, chest heaving and eyes like burnt holes, hooded and set back into his face, the green illuminated by the lights that he stands under. The bruise glows against the alabaster skin of Harry’s throat and Louis feels a sense of satisfaction.  
  
Harry won’t forget the boy in the striped shirt who left his mark on him at a club the night before Christmas.

 

**

 

Someone is knocking at the door and Louis wants to rip their fucking fist off. His eyes are crusty and gummy when he wakes up and his head feels like it weighs 9000 lbs. Wrapped in a quilt, Louis staggers over to the door and wrenches it open to find carolers gathered in the hall outside his door. A bunch of 12 year olds are singing Jingle Bells in his face when he’s so hungover he doesn’t even know which way is up or down.  
  
But it’s Christmas Eve and its his 20th birthday and it’s Louis’s fault he’s so hungover so he leans against the doorframe and listens to the kids sing. A girl in the back has blue eyes and blonde hair and looks so much like Lottie that Louis thinks he must be pmsing because all of a sudden, he’s tearing up and one of the little boys in the front, who can’t be more than 7 years old, reaches out and takes Louis’s tanned hand in his own and keeps singing. Louis doesn’t have the heart to shake the boy’s sticky fingers off his, so he stands there with his hand being held by a stranger, listening to a Christmas carol at noon on Christmas Eve, with the apartment lying empty and silent behind him.  
  
It’s either one of the best Christmas Eves wake-ups or the worst, depending on whether you enjoy angelic children singing at you. Louis finds that he does. Zayn would have invited them all in and given them cups of cocoa. Louis isn’t that nice. When the kids finally leave, after singing Silent Night out-of-tune, he smiles and praises them and then flops on the couch, burying his face in the cushions.  
  
What was he thinking last night? Dancing with Harry Styles? God, he was such a cunt to Harry, but it was those eyes and that mouth, it made Louis want to do awful things. And now it was Christmas Eve and Harry’s probably at home with family or out filthily dancing with another boy in a striped shirt, thinking it was Louis or something. Louis had had him in the palm of his hand and he gave it up, just to teach Harry a lesson. He could’ve been waking up with Harry in his bed right now, but instead Louis’s pride wanted to take Harry down a few notches and Louis kicks himself for letting his drunken ego get in the way of what he actually wants. Ideally, Louis would have woken up this morning and turned over to see those green eyes looking at him or something. That would have made for the perfect Christmas Eve morning wake-up.  
  
But instead it was sentimental children and loneliness. Fuck. Louis spends the day hating himself and every person in the world with green eyes.  
  
By 8 pm, Louis is is contemplating throwing himself out the window of their flat. 9 storeys to his death. That’d be an unhappy thing for Zayn come home to.

 _'Boy commits suicide on birthday over Christmas loneliness._ ’

Serve the fucker right. Louis can feel the desperation and loneliness in him driving his stupid and bitter thoughts, but the all-consuming silence of the flat is beating on the inside of his head, the mantra of  _n_ _o one wants you, no one wants you_ repeating itself over and over again until it feels like it’s flashing red words on the insides of his eyelids.

He sits at the window like some depressed, pining old cat-lady with no family or friends. Clear and cold, the night haunts him. From where the window is positioned, Louis can see all the way down the street and it’s bustling with families unloading presents from cars and kids having snowball fights in the street. There are large red bows on all the street lamps that cast large circles of light on the snow. Every so often a door to a house will open and a burst of laughter and music and family will float out and Louis’s heart has twisted so many times this evening, he’s not even sure he has a heart left. That’s a dramatic thought.  
  
By 9 pm, Louis is 100% certain he won’t make it through till morning. He’s moved to the couch now, the sight of happy families inciting some disturbing thoughts in him that consist of throwing pots and pans out the window and knocking out some of the gleeful children in the street. Louis is wrapped up in blankets on the sofa, cursing whoever invented alcohol and debating whether to get up and get Advil or just suffer through till morning. Chances are he’s spending the night in Zayn’s room again. He pretends to himself it’s because it’s closer to the bathroom, but he knows better.  
  
The only solution is to leave the apartment. Except for his drunken escapade the night before, Louis has barely left the flat since he said goodbye to Zayn at the airport. Good thing Louis doesn’t know anyone in their building, he’d be embarrassed for anybody to see him looking like such shit. So Louis showers, taking too long and using up all the hot water, because if he’s not happy on Christmas Eve, no one else in the apartment building deserves to be happy and taking away their hot water seems like the best course of action.  
  
By 10 pm, Louis is meandering down 8th street. Most stores are shut up, _a ‘closed for Christmas_ ' sign hanging in their window, and only the occasional person passes him on the street. The only people around are others like Louis, wanderers of a lonely nature. They nod their heads at Louis like they can sense a fellow comrade and he's struck by that similar feeling of shame to be one of those people who has nowhere to go on Christmas Eve. He stops by the liquor store on Carbury Avenue, buys a bottle of vodka, and wallows in his misery, alternating between riding the subway to get out of the cold and walking the silent and empty streets.  
  
People look at him strangely as he wanders around, slowly getting drunk, but it’s not the kind of drunk that drives him to make stupid decisions with boys with nice cheekbones under flashing lights. It’s the kind of drunk that makes him think all the thoughts he usually keeps tucked away in the back of his mind. Why has life fucked Louis over so much that even his best friend won’t fall in love with him? Better yet, why can’t Louis fall in love with his best friend? Why did he manage to get into the best drama school in the country but now that he’s there, all he wants to do is be somewhere else, anywhere else? Louis’s scared. He’s not an idiot, he’s just scared. Scared of himself, scared of not getting what he wants, scared of getting what he wants, scared of no one remembering him after he’s gone. At this rate, there won’t be anybody to remember. He’ll be a lifeless shell of who he’s supposed to be, he’ll be the man who drinks his miseries away and fucks until the sun comes up. That will be Louis. And that’s how people will remember him.  
  
He walks all the way down to Rockefeller Centre and stands in front of the huge Christmas tree, gazing up at the sparkling lights and wondering when the fuck his life got so depressing. Couples are out, skating on the ice rink and giggling, holding hands, and Louis wants to be sick. He hates himself and he hates those couples. He doesn’t hate Zayn, who he got a text from at 1 pm saying ‘happy birthday boo, love and miss the fuck out of you. hope all’s well, see you in a few days xx’. He likes Zayn just fine.  
  
10:30 rolls around and Louis finds himself standing at the entrance gate of a tree nursery. He has no idea how he got himself here, he doesn’t even know what part of the city he’s in. Somewhere on 35th street. There’s a big burly man getting ready to close the gate.  
  
'You want a tree, son?' The man has turned to look at Louis. Louis knows he looks pathetic, with his too-big puffy parka sagging low on his shoulders, and fuzzy mitts wrapped around the half-empty bottle of vodka. He reckons his eyes are pretty blood-shot, if the sand-paper feel to them is any indication. At least his hair looks good.  
  
'Um, yeah. Yeah, I do, do you have any small ones?' Louis's voice is scratchy from disuse. He can't believe he's actually asking for a Christmas tree, but hell, it'll make the flat look better. It's not like he's planning on decorating it.  
  
'Sure do, you wait right here, I got one perfect for you.' The man turns away and disappears into the row of trees. Most of them are short or scrawny, the only ones that people didn't want. They're not large and bushy and perfect. The branches are broken off, or they have large gaps in the bush. Louis feels like he's one of those trees, left for garbage day, or for drunk people like himself. Louis is an unwanted Christmas tree. It has a nice ring to it.  
  
The man comes back and he’s dragging a tree that’s only 2 and a half feet tall. ‘It’s a baby tree, no one wanted it, but it had to come out of the ground, it was dying. I’ll give it to you for free, gotta get rid of it.’ The man has a gentle smile on his ruddy and wind-worn face and Louis wants to hug him.  
  
'Thank you, sir, thank you so much.' Louis hoists the tree into his arms. It's sticky on his mitts, sap leaking from the narrow trunk, but Louis treasures the gift, grateful to the man who must've seen the desperation in Louis's eyes.  
  
Louis turns to go, the tree sitting on his shoulder, but the man puts a hand on his shoulder and stops him. ‘Son, you got a place to stay tonight? Family to see?’ His voice is a little worried, but Louis doesn’t blame him. The bottle of vodka was obvious, and why would a 20 year old be out on the streets of New York at 10:30 pm on Christmas Eve?  
  
'Yessir, I do. Just getting this tree for my sisters,' Louis smoothly lies to the man, the falseness of his statement gliding off his tongue and leaving a bitter taste behind. The man's eyes are concerned. Louis doesn't look him in the eye.  
  
'Alright, well, Merry Christmas.' The man lets go of Louis's shoulder.  
  
'Merry Christmas, and thank you!'

* * *

A homeless crackhead tries to steal Louis’s tree when he’s three blocks from his apartment. He lets go when Louis gives him the rest of the vodka. Louis guards this tree with his life; it’s going to sit in the corner of the living room and every time Louis looks at it, he’s going to remember that even though he is an unwanted Christmas tree, this tree was made for him. The alcohol is doing funny things to his brain.  
  
Louis turns onto the street that the Royal Blues club is on and out of habit, he strains his eyes for the long figure in the black coat, leaning against the brick wall. He catches himself, his alcohol-soaked brain remembering that it’s Christmas Eve, Harry won’t be there. There are no long legs propped up on the wall, no thin fingers wrapped around a cigarette. Louis has the feel of Harry’s hips bracketing his imprinted into his bones, he won’t forget it any time soon. He has the marks of Harry’s hands on his own hips to remind him, long purple bruises that sting with the reminder of every bad choice Louis made last night.  
  
As Louis nears the club, he hears yelling coming from the alley beside the lounge, and when he nears the start of the alley, he looks down to the end of the small street, and dear god, what is his luck, because Harry fucking Styles is actually standing at the end of the alley, towering over the small stringy manager from the club. Louis almost laughs at the irony of the situation because really, how many times is he going to run into this kid before it’s no longer coincidence and this boy becomes the universe’s way of laughing at Louis?  
  
'I need this! I need to play, you don't understand!' Harry sounds almost close to tears, his voice choked and rough, but his hands are clenched in fists, eyes dark and wild as he stares down at the small man trembling underneath his gaze. Louis creeps down the alley, keeping in the shadows provided by the tall building.  
  
'I'm sorry, son, but it's Christmas Eve and there are families in the club, I can't let you play when you're in this state. It's not respectable,' the man says, voice shaking a little bit. Louis admires him for actually standing there and facing the wrath of Harry's anger. As Louis gets closer, he can see that Harry's eyes aren't focused right. He's drunk. Again. Louis has not yet seen the kid sober. And Louis thought he was the one with a drinking problem.  
  
'Please, please, I promise I'm not drunk, I can play, I have to, I can manage!' Harry's begging now and his cheeks are flushed, tinged pink and his eyes are red-rimmed and if he hadn't been such a dick to him the night before, Louis would almost be feeling sad for the boy.  
  
'No,' the manager says firmly. He turns to walk away, leaving Harry staring after him. Harry's hands come up and clench in his hair, like he's going to pull it out of the roots and Louis wants to reach out, say  _no, don’t, I like your hair_  but then Harry’s fist is flying out and he’s punching the brick wall and there’s a sickening crunch and Louis is gasping and the manager is gasping and there’s a red smear on the bricks and Harry is cradling his bloody fist in his hand as he stalks out of the alley, not even glancing in Louis’s direction.  
  
The manager stares wide-eyed at Louis and Louis stares back, frozen to the spot, unsure if he should follow Harry or just be fucking done with the kid and let him go off into the night.  
  
Somehow, he finds himself pulling the small tree higher up on his shoulder and hurrying off down the alley, following the black figure with the wild curls that seem matted down, dirty almost, not the springy locks that Louis had had his hands in the night before.  
  
Louis follows Harry down the street, but all of a sudden, Harry ducks off the pavement, slipping a little bit on a patch of ice, and disappears into a bar Louis has never been into. Louis swears, if this night is going to replay like the first night he saw Harry, and he loses him in some crowd, Louis is going to banish all thoughts of Harry Styles from his brain and curse the boy to the depths of hell, because he has been on Louis’s mind for 99% of the past two weeks and Louis is fucking sick of the addictive nature of the boy’s fingers and his hair and his eyes and his voice. Louis’s not sure if he can handle the memory of dancing with Harry last night and also a reminder of Harry’s formidable talent at the piano existing at the same time in his brain; he thinks it might explode if it comes to that.  
  
But when he pushes open the door to the bar, it’s almost empty. Soft Christmas music is playing from a radio behind the counter, and dim lights illuminate dusty and empty tables. There’s a few old men sitting in a booth, staring into their glasses of beer. And there’s a guy behind the counter, slowly wiping down glasses and swaying to the music emitting from the radio. Louis notices none of this; his eyes are drawn to the hunched figure sitting at the bar. Harry’s hand lies  on the counter, a small puddle of blood pooling on the counter, and the bartender keeps glancing over warily, as if he expects Harry to spring up and throw something at him. With broad shoulders and thick forearms, though, it doesn’t look like the bartender would have a problem with Harry. His doe-like brown eyes make him look younger than he probably really is. Louis watches as the brown-eyed-boy slides a glass of something clear to Harry and Harry downs the whole glass. The bartender’s eyes widen in shock and he scurries away from Harry to fill up another glass, sliding that to Harry, and then going back to drying the glasses, throwing concerned glances at Harry the entire time.  
  
Louis sits down at the far end of the bar, away from Harry, and carefully leans his Christmas tree that he’s still carrying along the side of the counter. What is he doing here? God, this kid always makes Louis do the stupidest things for no reason. Nothing came of Louis following Harry into the club two weeks ago and nothing is going to come of him sitting at the bar watching Harry like he’s some circus animal. But Louis orders a drink nonetheless, just a Coke, because the vodka is wearing off and he’d rather be the sober of the two, if he actually has to talk to Harry.  
  
Harry is grumbling to himself, unbloodied hand clenching and releasing and Louis was right when he thought Harry’s hair looked unclean. The chestnut curls are flattened against one side of his head, like he woke up late and didn’t have time to shower. A small voice in Louis’s head is saying  _turn around, turn around_ , because he wants to see the purple mark he left on Harry last night, wants to remember that actually happened. But he doesn’t move, just sips his coke and watches Harry.  
  
It’s nearing midnight now. There’s a clock over the door to the bar, little reindeer dancing around the edges of the face. As the minutes pass, Harry gets drunker and drunker. The bartender keeps sliding drinks to him and Louis has half a mind to tell the bartender to cut him off.  
  
'You a friend of his?' says a young voice with an English accent. Louis looks up. The bartender is standing in front of him and of course, there are three British young men in a bar in New York, what a surprise.  
  
'What?'  
  
The bartender jerks his thumb towards where Harry sits. His head is down on the bar now, but he’s still mumbling and every so often Louis hears a wet catch of breath that tells him Harry might be crying a little bit.  
  
'Do you know him?' The bartender asks again. His eyes are wide with worry. He doesn't really look suited to the job. 'I know he's probably not 21 but it's Christmas Eve and I didn't have the heart to turn him away, he looked miserable when he stumbled in here.'  
  
'Oh. No, not a friend. But you should cut him off, he doesn't look so good,' Louis says quietly.  
  
The bartender nods.  
  
Ten minutes later, when Harry slides off his stool, Louis decides it’s time to go and talk to him. He and the bartender lift Harry up by his armpits and sit him back onto his barstool and Louis sits down beside him, waving off the bartender’s anxious hands.  
  
'Whatdya want?' Harry grunts, his voice a deep rasp. Louis feels a hot breath wash over him as Harry turns towards him and he almost throws up at the pure alcohol of Harry's breath.  
  
'You're drunk,' Louis states.  
  
'I sure am,' Harry laughs angelically and hiccups. His eyes look red and a little too shiny and Louis's sure he was crying when his head was down on the table.  
  
'That doesn't seem like such a great way of spending Christmas Eve.' Louis's just saying the first things that come to his mind.  
  
'No, probably not,' Harry agrees. He still doesn't seem to recognize Louis from the club last night and Louis wants to stand up and shake him but then Harry turns towards him and oh my god, there's the love-bite and its huge and purple, with blue-ish red edges to it and Louis's heart jumps in his throat at the sight. Harry's black collared shirt is unbuttoned an indecent way down his chest, till Louis can see the thin necklaces from last night and the pale dip of his throat where the love-bite sits.  
  
'Don't you have anywhere to go?' Louis asks Harry, actually concerned now by Harry's completely cavalier attitude towards the fact that he's fall-down-drunk in a bar. Louis's conveniently forgotten that he was the exact same way just an hour ago.  
  
'Don't you have someone else to bother?' Harry says throatily. 'Fuck off, please, I'm trying to be drunk here.'  
  
'Your hand is bleeding all over this nice man's counter, I don't think he appreciates it,' Louis gestures towards the bartender who's wiping down the glasses at a glacial pace, intently watching the interaction between the two boys.  
  
'Fuck him,' Harry wheezes.  
  
'No, thanks,' Louis responds pleasantly. 'Not my type, unfortunately.' He winks at the bartender, who gives him a hesitant but confused smile.  
  
'Jesus christ, mate, leave me alone,' Harry groans and attempts to swat Louis away but he's so drunk his hand doesn't even come within 10 inches of Louis's arm.  
  
'Missed.' Louis's taking some sort of sick pleasure in goading Harry. Maybe he's taking out his anger at the world on this kid with the cherub cheeks and wild eyes, or maybe he's still stinging at the harsh rejection last night. 'I think your hand is broken.'  
  
Harry looks up at that, looks at his hand like he forgot it was mangled. It lies there, the skin ripped off his knuckles, and he starts at the realization that his hand is lying in blood. But he doesn’t say anything, just looks sideways at Louis.  
  
'You don't remember me, do you?' Louis takes the dive and decides it's high-time Harry remembers that Louis made him pant last night, that he's responsible for the throbbing bruise at the base of his throat.  
  
'No, should I?' Harry scoffs at him, rolling his eyes with what seems like great effort.  
  
Louis reaches his hand out and presses his pointer finger into the middle of the bruise and Harry hisses at the contact and then yelps, scooting his chair away from Louis and staring at him with wide eyes. Louis just sits there and smiles at him, head cocked and eyebrow raised. Harry looks down at his neck and touches one finger to the bruise and then looks back up to Louis and Louis can see the realization occur, watches as the shock spreads through the green eyes that are so dark with alcohol.  
  
'Louis,' he holds out his hand, but Harry doesn't take it, continues to stare at him, and Louis awkwardly lets his hand drop back into his lap. 'I believe your name is Harry Styles.'  
  
'H-how the fuck do you know my name?' Harry says softly. His eyes are so big in his face, he looks so young and Louis wants to gather him up and take him home.  
  
'I saw you play at the Royal one night.' Louis leaves out the fact that he's also seen Harry 12 other times besides that. 'You're quite good, you know. Now, what are we going to do about your hand?'  
  
Harry tears his gaze away from Louis and looks down at his fingers, flexing them and hissing at the pain. ‘Just gonna go home. Don’t really care.’  
  
Louis tuts. ‘No, no. You’re drunk off your ass, you idiot, and it’s 12:30 at night and ten below. You’ll be dead in a gutter by morning.’  
  
The bartender has come back over now, lured in by Harry’s yelp and the curiosity on his face is so overwhelmingly adorable that Louis wants to include him in this. Louis feels like something huge is happening right now, and it doesn’t feel right to leave out the brown-eyed-boy.  
  
'Mate, what's your name?' Louis asks the bartender.  
  
'Liam.'  
  
'Liam, darling, lovely to meet you. Would you mind helping young Harry here stand up while I go collect my Christmas tree?' Liam nods and comes around from the bar.  
  
'Why the fuck do you have a Christmas tree?' Harry calls out after him. He's refusing to let Liam pick him up and Liam's just standing there waving his hands about with an exasperated look on his face. 'Mate, fuck off, I'm not going anywhere,' Harry snaps at Liam as he tries to put his hands on Harry's shoulders.  
  
'It's Christmas and I wanted a tree.' Louis picks up his tree and puts it over his shoulder. 'Get the fuck up, Harry, you're coming back to my flat. I'm not letting you wander around until you collapse of drunkenness. And you're not dressed warm enough. I live right around the corner.'  
  
Harry stares at him. Louis stares back. Liam stares at both of them and the old men in the corner continue to stare into the gold liquid in their glasses.  
  
'Come back with me?' Louis says quietly, softening his face into something pleasant and persuasive. Liam gives him little eyebrow twitches that Louis thinks is supposed to be encouragement but they make him look like a rabbit, so Louis looks away so he doesn't laugh and ruin his act.  
  
Harry’s green eyes are dark, his pupils blown with alcohol and what Louis hopes is anticipation and lust. His long fingers pick at a thread on his sleeve absentmindedly as he considers Louis. Finally he sighs in defeat.  
  
'Alright. I'll come home with you.'


	6. Chapter 5

'Jesus Christ, Harry,' Louis shakes Harry's fingers off his for the third time in five minutes since they left the bar. 

'What?' Harry pouts. 'Didn't seem to have a problem last night.' Louis can feel his gaze, but he knows if he turns to Harry and looks him in the eye, they'll never make it past the street corner.

'You don't even remember last night!' Louis exclaims, 'and I was drunk.'

'Well…', Harry snakes a long arm around Louis's waist, under his coat. 'Let's get drunk and do a repeat of last night then. Help me remember.'

To be honest, Louis isn’t entirely sure why he’s not just throwing Harry up against the nearest surface. It might be his adorably slurred speech, or his cheeks, getting pinker with every passing minute until Louis wants to lick them just to see if his skin is as soft as it looks.

'No, thanks,' he says. 'I like having sex with sober people.' Well, that's a lie. Louis doesn't have sex  _unless_  the person is drunk.

He inserts his key in the front door of the building and the harsh hallway light blinds them for a few moments, bright after the hazy darkness of the night. 

First Louis sees stars, little white spots in his vision, and then it’s all green and a slam and curly hair and breath that smells of vodka and the poke of the Christmas tree in his hip and good god, Harry has him pressed up against the door of Mrs. Goodwin’s apartment.

'I was wondering if I could…' Harry gently nips at Louis's throat, 'return the favor.' His voice has gotten huskier, if that's even possible, and Louis has to struggle with himself not to melt under Harry's touch. Harry's lips are dizzyingly red and puffy and Louis wants to grab them with his teeth and  _god_ , what is it about this kid?

'Your breath smells like vodka,' Louis sniffs haughtily, ignoring the slight tremor in his voice.

Harry chuckles, deep in his throat, and Louis internally shudders at the sound of it. It’s dirty and filthy and sums up everything Louis wants to do to Harry. But instead, he tugs on Harry’s wrists on the wall behind him and ducks out from under Harry’s arms.

He maybe swing his hips a little bit walking towards the lift. He can feel Harry’s eyes on him.

In the lift, Harry stands so close to Louis, he can feel the heat radiating off him. Under the smell of vodka is musky cologne and sweat and Louis’s head spins. Harry has that gravitational pull like a horror movie. Everything about him sets off Louis’s alarm bells but he can’t help wanting to see more, wants to know if he can make Harry’s cheeks flush that lovely pink, make him bite his lips again. The canyon-like dips of his collarbones fucking speak to Louis, like there are goddamn poems written in ink and Louis’s life depends on reading those poems and knowing them by heart.

It’s hard not to act on those wants when Harry’s green owl-like eyes haven’t left his face, when his arm keeps brushing Louis’s and Louis can feel goose bumps erupting on his arm inside his coat. Louis stares at the elevator key pad, the floors sliding by. He wills the eighth floor to come sooner, so he can be away from Harry’s ridiculous magnetism.

Louis survives the walk from the elevator to the apartment. He stands there, fumbling with his key as Harry stands behind him, inches away, his breath blowing warmly in the back of Louis’s neck and all the hairs stand up and he prays that Harry can’t see the shiver that travels down his spine.

'So, this is it…' Louis swings open the door and flicks the light on. The never ending line of blank canvases line the wall, casting menacing shapes on the walls of what Louis has fondly referred to as his cell for the last three days. The lights brighten only the kitchen, and the rest of the flat is bathed in the silver moonlight that streams in the windows.

'You're a painter?' Harry gestures towards the canvases. They strike an intimidating scene, starkly unfinished and lined up like soldiers waiting to be scoured under Zayn's paint-brush. At least, that's the way Zayn described them one night. He said, Louis remembers, that the canvases are his ‘skeletal children’. Those were his exact words. He said they were a line of gaunt skeletons, desperate for him to paint their lines in, to make them into something. And that he was always in a race to save these desperate children before they died. He might have been high at the moment, but Louis has never lost those words and they sit under his skin whenever he sees the absolute whiteness of the canvases.

'No. I just live with one,' Louis says, watching Harry for his reaction. True to his expectations, Harry's face falls a tiny bit and Louis doesn't correct the conclusion he comes to. 'Make yourself at home. I'm going to make tea and get some stuff for your hand. And a clean shirt.'

Harry looks down at his shirt, like he doesn’t even realize it’s covered in blood. His hair hangs in his eyes and Louis is struck with the urge to push his fringe off his forehead and his fingers itch with the need. Harry nods once and turns back towards the corner of the room that is obviously Zayn’s. The easel is set up, and there are stacks of sketches and plain paper. Sheets are thrown on the floor, muffling Harry’s footsteps. 

Louis gently sets the Christmas tree against the wall of the entryway and then busies himself in the kitchen. His fingers are shaking as he dunks a tea bag in the pot. He wonders what he’s doing. Harry is standing in the living room. And Louis is in the kitchen. There’s something very wrong about this. On any other occasion, Louis and whoever it was that night would be fucking on the doormat, unable to make it to the bedroom.

But there’s just something about Harry that made Louis want to gather him up and heal him, not split him open and make him whine. Not that he doesn’t want to do that too, he does. But then he wants to cuddle Harry in and clean him up and get him a blanket and let him fall asleep with his head in Louis’s shoulder. He wants to open Harry up and examine the scarlet lines of his heart, take apart his skeleton and count his bones and then fit them against Louis’s.  Harry is a tornado of an enigma, and Louis burns to understand him, wants to line up their hands together to see if his hand fits in those large fingers and maybe he wants to wake up and know what Harry’s face looks like in the morning. But that’s not him, right, because Louis can’t do intimacy, he doesn’t do intimacy, it’s a foreign subject with him. Real intimacy, that is. Louis can shower fucking compliments and snuggles like anyone else, but fuck if it means anything. It never means anything. Not with anybody but Zayn, least of all someone who seems a little volatile and was drunk not an hour ago. So Louis clears his head of Harry’s lips and his eyes and his hands and pours Harry a cup of tea.

When Louis brings it out to the living room, Harry is standing in Zayn’s corner, facing a canvas that Louis can’t see. Harry’s back is tall and straight and the black shirt hugs the contours of the muscles near his waist. His torso is impossibly long and Louis swallows past a dry throat and walks across the room. The sheets dampen his footsteps and Harry starts when Louis appears at his shoulder. He hands Harry the mug, turns to see which painting Harry is looking at and his breath hitches.

The painting is of Louis himself. It’s one of the ones Zayn painted in the early months of their friendship, before Zayn’s painting got dark and chaotic and stopped having meaning for Louis and simply became the thing that owned more of Zayn’s heart than Louis would ever have claim to. It’s the last painting Louis let Zayn do of him, because by then he’d realized maybe they meant something different to him than they did to Zayn.

The painting scares Louis a little bit. He remembers standing for it. Zayn had taken his hand, put his lips to his ear and whispered ‘I want to paint all of you’ and Louis had slowly unbuttoned his shirt with trembling fingers and Zayn had knelt and unbuckled his trousers for him. Louis stood, absolutely naked, in front of a plain white wall in the old studio in the art building on campus. He wasn’t smiling, just standing there with his arms hanging down at his sides and the thrill of being looked at creeping under his skin. It was two in the morning.

Zayn painted him and Louis didn’t move for three hours and when Zayn finished, he lovingly put Louis’s clothes on for him and pressed lips covered in black paint to Louis’s lips.

The painting makes Louis sad, for reasons he pretends he doesn’t know.

Louis looks to Harry for his reaction to this painting of Louis at his most exposed. His eyebrows are knit together, small wrinkles marring his pale forehead peeking out under the sweep of curls.

'I don't understand,' Harry finally says, not looking at Louis. His eyes are still trained on the painting and Louis wants to say  _good, stop looking at it, it’s not for you, I’m over here, that’s not me anymore_. The rounded curves of Louis’s hips are for Zayn’s passion-darkened eyes and nobody else’s and Louis’s not even sure he’s the same person now that he was in the painting that Louis regrets every day of his life. He doesn’t know why it was visible under all the finished canvases leaning against each other in this corner.

'How did you see it?' Louis asks, not answering Harry's confusion.

'Your head was showing above another one. It stood out to me.' Harry looks sideways at Louis. 'Who painted it?'

'It's hard to explain.' Louis doesn't want to explain the full complexity of his relationship with Zayn to some kid with cherry lips and eyes like moons. 

Harry is silent for a few moments and then, ‘Alright.’ He tears his eyes away from the painting, away from the angular planes of Louis’s body forever inscribed on the canvas. He gives a little half-smile to Louis, and that dimple pops out and Louis wants to reach one finger out and sink it into the tiny dent and see if his fingertip would fit perfectly into it. He smiles back a little bit and Harry’s grin grows a little bit wider.

'Come on. Let's get you cleaned up,' Louis says and turns back towards the kitchen. He hears Harry follow him and Louis is glad he's not looking at any more of the paintings in that corner. Louis doesn't know what's over there and he's not sure he wants to, let alone have Harry witness those secrets on canvas.

Louis gathers bandage and antibiotic cream from the first aid kit from the cupboard above the dishwasher and they sit at the table.

'How come you know what you're doing?' Harry asks as Louis starts mopping Harry's hand with a clean dish towel.

'Mum's a nurse,' Louis says. 'Shh, I'm concentrating.'

Harry barks out a loud laugh and then covers his mouth with his free hand. ‘Sorry,’ he giggles, sounding completely unrepentant. His dimple is in full-force and Louis can’t help but grin at him a little bit.

They sit there in silence as Louis methodically cleans and puts antibiotic cream on Harry’s hand and has Harry flex his fingers to make sure they’re not broken. The air seems to be crackling with some sort of electricity and Louis can’t look into Harry’s eyes, but he’s felt them on him the entire time he’s been bandaging his hand.

Louis is finishing tying the bandage when Harry breaks the silence.

'Why aren't you with your family for Christmas?' his voice is soft, but it sounds echoing in the empty kitchen.

Louis is silent. He could tell Harry why and he could watch his eyes droop in sympathy. Or hate. Either of the two. Instead, he says,

'Why aren't  _you_?’

'Because I'm messed up and I think I'm turning into an alcoholic and I don't want my mum to know.' Harry's voice is soft and sad, but there's no hesitation. Louis looks up from where he's been playing with the cap of the ointment. He considers Harry's face. Harry's eyes are steadily watching Louis, completely truthful and Louis feels bad for not telling him the truth when Harry just gave up something like that. The quiet admittance feels like the truest thing Louis has ever heard and he realizes suddenly that Harry's eyes may be the clearest window into his mind, but that mouth doesn’t lie either.

Harry slides his hand across the table and grasps two of Louis’s fingers in his large hand and squeezes a little bit. He scoots his chair closer to Louis’s until their knees are touching and he bumps his knee a little bit against Louis’s and gives him an encouraging little smile.

'I'm not wanted at home,' Louis says quietly, meeting Harry's eyes and looking for a reaction. His eyes just soften and there's that little sympathetic droop but Louis finds that he doesn't mind.

And when Harry leans forward and presses his lips against Louis’s, Louis finds he doesn’t mind that either. There’s no other contact, just the soft moving of Harry’s lips against his and the slight pressure of his knee leaning against Louis’s. 

'I'm sorry,' Harry breathes out against Louis's lips. He kisses the corner of Louis's mouth gently, and then his cheek and then moves his lips to Louis's ear. 'I'm sorry they don't want you at home but…', he bites the shell of Louis's ear, 'I do.' A shudder runs through Louis at the sensation of those lips and teeth on his ear and his breath hitches and then he finds himself standing up and moving into Harry's lap and Harry's breath all comes out in one big rush and Louis closes his mouth around the surprised gasp that comes out of Harry's mouth and his legs straddle Harry’s hips and it’s like his mind releases a relieved sigh of  _finally, finally, finally_.

And suddenly it’s no longer sweet and it’s no longer chaste. Louis licks into Harry’s mouth, runs his tongue along the ridge behind Harry’s teeth and strokes his tongue with his own. Their teeth clash and it’s messy and dirty and Louis gets lost in the feeling of Harry’s soft lips moving with his own chapped ones. Harry pants into his mouth, the hot breath caught in between them, and Louis’s teeth grab at Harry’s pillowy lips and bite down. Harry groans and sobs a little bit, and he sounds wrecked already; the vibrations of his moan travel into Louis’s mouth and he swallows around it and sinks even closer to Harry, feels Harry’s huge hands wrap around Louis’s hips and he knows that’ll leave bruises and he finds he doesn’t mind that either. He finds that he wants a purple-blue reminder of the boy with the green eyes and the pale skin and he thinks that if he never sees this boy again, he’ll have the memory of the way Harry’s hips keep shifting upwards and how the skin behind his ears is so soft, Louis wants to run his tongue there and feel the downy skin. So he does. And Harry gasps and squirms and grabs his hips harder and Louis takes Harry’s head in his hands and carefully, because this boy is made of emerald porcelain, tilts his head back to suck gently on the angry looking bruise at the base of Harry’s throat. Harry keens above him and his hips thrust up, almost unseating Louis until he grabs Harry’s shoulders, leans in, and whispers in his ear,

'Don't move.'

And Harry freezes. The way his hands still and his hips still but his breath is ragged, goes straight to Louis’s cock and he has to mentally stop himself from rolling his hips on top of Harry. Louis can feel the hard length of Harry’s cock through his black jeans, but he ignores it and bites at the pale line of Harry’s jaw, teeth grazing on the bone and Harry whimpers. His hands fly up and snake under Louis’s shirt, traveling up his back and then down again, and then he’s pulling on the bottom of his shirt.

Louis grabs Harry’s wrists from behind him and slams them into the wall behind the chair and grins at him, feeling his teeth bare and he laughs unrestrained, breathlessly, at the stunned look on Harry’s face. He feels drunk, high off the smell of Harry and the feel of his eyes in him and the sounds that keep falling out of his red mouth that’s wet and swollen from Louis’s lips.

'I'm going to take off your shirt. I want you to leave your arms up here until I tell you to move them,' Louis states matter-of-factly. Harry nods and his eyes are wide and pleading and desperate and Louis wants and wants and wants and then feels a twinge of  _this is wrong, this is wrong, don’t do this, something isn’t right_ and he pauses, assessing Harry’s face.

'Is this alright?' Louis asks, and there’s something about the way Harry’s eyelashes brush his cheek that tells Louis to handle this boy carefully, because his bones may be sewn together with frayed twine and the glass of his heart has a crack already in it. Louis’s normally-rough hands stroke the soft skin under Harry’s eyes. He peers into Harry's eyes and at first, all he can see is the pure lust and the desperation. He leans in and kisses Harry softly, moving their lips together. Harry sighs into his mouth and Louis smiles against his lips, feeling that manic laugh try to tear out of his throat, but he swallows it and brushes his lips to Harry's cheek. 

He looks at Harry and Harry’s got his eyes closed, head back against the wall and he’s still holding his arms where Louis told him to. He opens his eyes and Louis is shocked at how young he seems, and he realizes he doesn’t even know how old Harry is. His eyes are full of innocence, devoid of all that cocky bravado that so infuriated Louis at the club the night before (was it really only last night?). His dark lashes frame his eyes, wide and glossy with lust and the alcohol still lingering in his blood stream.

And then Louis sees it and he kicks himself for not seeing it before and he wonders why he didn’t, not when Harry reacted so strongly to everything.

'Harry? Have you ever done this?' he says quietly, leaning in close to Harry and willing him to tell the truth, piercing his eyes.

Harry stares at him, confused. Louis sighs.

‘Are you still drunk?’ he asks, not meeting Harry’s eyes. There’s a small dent in the wall next to Harry’s head. He doesn’t know how it got there. He stares at it.

‘I think so?’ Harry’s voice is timid, confused.

Fuck. It’s like, Louis’s used to it, right? He’s been here before. Knees digging into a club’s bathroom floor gritty with white powder. Louis has been other people’s experiments and he’s so desperate for it, for any sign that someone’s not going to walk away at the slightest flinch, that he doesn’t even notice the hesitation in a boy’s hands and the fear in his eyes. But then he’ll get his mouth around some kid’s cock and all of a sudden there’s yelling  _and fuck you, faggot, I’m not gay Jesus Christ I’m just drunk_  and it’s like well, fuck, that hurts. Louis’s done this before and if he doesn’t get his cock sucked, oh well. Fine. There are plenty of other boys with pretty lips. But it’s the harsh hands against his shoulders, pushing him away, and the spitting contempt and the mean eyes that follow him all the way out of the glaring lights and the  _faggot, faggot, faggot_  ringing in his ears and his dad’s voice and.

Louis gets it though. Harry’s drunk. And maybe Harry does like cock, or maybe not, and maybe he likes sinew and bone and stubble, but damn if Louis is going to give himself up to the boy with the eyes like moons so that he can find out whether that’s true.

Louis pinches the bridge of his nose with his fingers and sighs and Harry’s arms drop and the magic is broken. Louis slides off Harry’s lap, feels grasping fingers reach for him and he moves out of reach of Harry’s hands. He turns his back to Harry and gathers up the bandages and ointment from the table and his hands shake and his heart is beating too fast and,

‘Am I missing something? What just happened?’ Harry’s voice is small and Louis refuses to turn around and face him. He’s not sure he can see those eyes without fucking throwing something. He moves away from Harry, desperate to put some space between himself and the boy with the eyes.

‘Lou, wait,’ Harry reaches out for him and fuck, something breaks in Louis at the sound of Zayn’s name for him falling out of that fucking stupid mouth and,

‘Don’t fucking call me that,’ he snaps and throws the bandages and ointment into the sink with a clatter that echoes in the kitchen, resounding after the bitterness of his voice. ‘There’s blankets in the closet. Feel free to sleep on the couch.’

There’s silence behind him as Louis walks out of the kitchen, down the hall, and into the bathroom.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Louis decides that the world enjoys shitting on his life. Louis’s fucking problem (and he knows this, Zayn has told him before) is that he gets attached too quickly and he throws himself into it and then nine times out of ten, the other person fucks up yet another part of Louis until he feels like he’s made up of all the broken and dangling bits of him that someone’s left for all those doomed people to come after. And Louis, scarred and fragmented and imperfect, can’t resist shiny and new and temptingly pretty. Harry is all of those things. New people are flashy and exciting and Louis gets so sucked in, that suddenly he finds himself straddling a stranger in his kitchen and his brain has short circuited and the universe cruelly laughs at him.

Louis gets in the shower and resists the urge to put his face under the water and hold his breath.

He doesn’t, though. Drown. He makes do with hitting himself in the face with one of Zayn’s many shampoo bottles. His face hurts after, so it probably wasn’t a good idea. He thinks he might be a little drunk still.

Louis puts on clean pyjamas and a tshirt and all he can think about is forgetting this stupid night and stupid kid that he brought home with him and all he wants to do is go to bed.

When he walks out the bathroom, Harry is sitting on his bed, holding something in his hands. Louis stares at him. Harry won’t look at him.

‘I don’t understand what just happened,’ Harry finally says, still not looking at Louis. His voice is scratchy and Louis swears if Harry’s cried, he’s going to kick him out right now because he can’t deal with moony boys and tears.

Louis still doesn’t say anything and tries to see what Harry is holding and then Harry holds it up and the light catches it and it’s a picture. Of Louis and Zayn.

‘Is this the painter?’ Harry asks. He looks up at Louis and the bathroom light behind Louis makes a geometric shadow on the planes of Harry’s face, darkened by the inky black of Louis’s bedroom.

The picture is awful quality, taken with a disposal camera they’d bought at three in the morning from a convenience store. The owner had kicked them out afterwards, because they were high and it was obvious. Louis doesn’t know what the fuck it is about Harry finding things of his life with Zayn, but he seems to have a knack for it. Louis’s not blind, he knows that Zayn is at the edges of every thought and every vision, but maybe he wasn’t that aware of it until there was someone else looking and touching and prodding. It’s not as if the picture leaves anything to be desired, though. It’s pretty obvious what’s going on. Louis’s grinning at the camera but Zayn’s teeth pull at his lip and Louis’s smile is distorted with his lip all stretched out but Louis remembers tangling his legs with Zayn’s on the frigid staircase of the art building where they always ended up.

His heart aches for the ease of those times.

‘Yeah,’ is all he says. ‘Does it matter?’

‘No. I was just wondering.’ Harry stares at the picture. ‘He’s beautiful.’

 _He’s not yours to look at_ , Louis thinks.

‘Yeah, he is.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Zayn.’

Louis does not want to be having this conversation so he walks forward and gently takes the picture out of Harry’s hands, puts it back on his night-stand and sits on the bed next to Harry. The five inches of space between their legs seems like miles of unspoken words and Louis struggles to find what it is that he needs to be saying. But Harry beats him to it.

‘Why aren’t you wanted at home?’

‘My dad isn’t a fan of my personal choices.’ Louis dips around the implications in his words and avoids the question. He wonders why he’s even having this conversation, but Harry’s long pale fingers are spread out on his thigh and it feels like there’s a string holding Harry’s fingers to Louis’s and anchoring him to the bed.

‘What does that mean?’ Harry turns to look at him and their faces are inches apart. In the light from the bathroom, Harry’s face is half glowing, one side bathed in darkness. His eyes are dark as he looks at Louis and Louis swallows, hating the feeling of those eyes on him. The green is like the bottle-green of a wine bottle and Louis almost laughs at the irony of two alcoholics sitting here drowning in something other than alcohol, suffocating under all those words that hang between them, heavy and sullen and Louis wonders why he feels like his heart and Harry’s heart are beating in time when this kid is new to him, when his bones aren’t Louis’s bones and his eyes are foreign wells of emotion.

‘It means I’m gay and he isn’t okay with that,’ Louis spits out. The words taste like acid, but Louis prides himself on throwing truth-laced daggers when necessary. It’s necessary now, with this boy and his owl-eyes and his spidery fingers.

Harry is silent. Louis expected as much. Harry probably thought Louis was just a drunken whore, desperate for anything with a mouth. Probably clapped himself on the back when Louis admitted why he wasn’t home, congratulated himself for finding a fucked-up boy with blue eyes that he could prey on.

And then,

‘Can I stay with you tonight?’

Wait what? He just told Harry he was gay and his immediate reaction was to ask if he could stay with Louis that night? Do green eyes mask a dull mind? And it’s like, yeah, Louis might want those pale hands on his hipbones and maybe he could deal with those curls suffocating him at five in the morning and maybe he wouldn’t mind watching Harry wake up with the sun behind his curls and his eyes a mossy green, but.

‘I just told you I was gay,’ Louis says slowly _. It’s three am_ , he thinks,  _I can’t deal with this shit_.

‘Wait, what? So?’ Harry’s voice is thick with exhaustion and confusion curling around the edges and what the fuck Louis is so confused and so tired and he wants this porcelain boy so much but he’s like blown glass and Louis needs to touch him gently but he doesn’t  _want_  to and maybe he doesn’t want to touch him at all but he knows he does and.

‘Goddamnit, Harry, I like cock and you don’t, I get it, but don’t fucking tease.’ The words feel hot and angry coming out of Louis’s mouth but he’s so tired, his voice is slow and burdened down and look, he just wants Zayn to come home, alright?

‘Hang on, what?’ Harry’s voice is stronger now and Louis can’t look at him, doesn’t want Harry to know that Louis can see straight through that transparency, that Louis knows Harry is just using him, like so many faceless strangers before. He’s not stupid. ‘What the fuck, Louis, what are you talking about?’

‘Just fucking stop, Harry, Jesus. Look, I get it, I was easy and you were drunk and who knows if you like cock or whatever, I don’t even care, I’m just tired and I want to sleep,’ Louis snaps, pushing Harry’s hand off his leg from where it was curling into the cotton of his pyjama pants.

And then Harry is laughing and Louis wants to punch his perfect jawline and snap the bird-bones of his pale wrists and fuck, he hates this boy so much and he wants him and he wants his face and his arms and he wants him to get out and he wants him under him and fuck.

‘Louis, oh my god,’ Harry grabs him and pulls Louis to his chest and Louis gets a mouthful of silky shirt and he coughs into Harry’s chest and wait why is his face in Harry’s chest? ‘I’m gay, oh my god, what are you on about?’

‘I am literally about to black out from exhaustion. I must not have heard you right,’ Louis says.

‘I’m gay. Why the fuck would I have kissed you if I wasn’t gay?’ Harry leans back and looks at him like he’s crazy and Louis feels a little insane but he’s not really sure why. And now he feels stupid, because Harry’s eyes have got that glow that people get when they love you a lot but they also think you’re stupid? Louis thinks the word he’s looking for is ‘fondly’. He’s pretty sure Zayn looks at him like that.

‘You said you were drunk,’ Louis weakly protests, trying to bat away Harry’s hand from his arm. ‘I thought you were just drunk and horny and I don’t know, having like, a gay-freak out.’

‘I was drunk and I was horny but Jesus, you’re a bit thick, I haven’t stopped thinking about you since we danced last night,’ Harry says, chuckling lowly and Louis’s stomach twists at the sound of that dirty laugh in the dark room.

‘Except for when you forgot about me, that is,’ Louis reminds him. His mouth is unwillingly twisting into something like a grimace, with all the feeling of a smile behind it.

‘Yeah, except for then,’ Harry laughs and grins at him and his smile is too wide and too bright and Louis finds himself falling too fast for this boy with the eyes like giant gems and the too-big mouth and the stupid crazy-scientist hair.

‘So you’re gay,’ Louis confirms. Harry nods.

“I mean, I’m bi, technically, but a person is a person so whatever.’

‘So why aren’t we fucking?’ Louis says slowly.

‘I dunno, mate, you put the stopper on that one, I was all ready and then you got pissy about whatever that whole mess was,’ Harry waves his arm around haphazardly and giggles and he sounds eight years old and it’s so charming that Louis thinks it must be a sin to want him so badly.

‘Right, well, now I’m too tired and you’re still covered in blood, so that’s not happening,’ Louis smiles and crawls up to the head of the bed. Harry pouts and looks at him with those eyes and Louis pats the space beside him.

Harry strips off his shirt (Louis does not avert his eyes), tugs off his trousers (Louis does not avert his eyes), and crawls up in just his boxers until he’s sitting curled next to Louis and he puts one huge hand on Louis’s jaw and leans in to kiss him softly.

Harry pulls away and smiles at him and they slip underneath the sheets and Louis can feel all Harry’s body heat radiating onto his and he’s still a little confused and still a little scared but the weight of Harry’s hand on his hipbone anchors him and he thinks maybe he can fall asleep.

Harry leans over him and his hair falls in his eyes. His eyes are dark, soft. Louis wants to drown in him.

‘So, seriously, why won’t you sleep with me?’ Harry asks, his head cocked. A small smile plays along his red lips and Louis wants to bite it off his face but he resists the urge and turns his head to the side when Harry leans down to capture his lips.

‘Because, are you still going to be gay in the morning?’

‘No, my sexuality changes every night,’ Harry deadpans and Louis stifles a laugh.

‘Well, people have a tendency to fuck around and leave when the sun comes up,’ he says quietly and Harry’s laughter dies off and that droopy sympathetic look comes back.

‘I mean…I was going to make you breakfast? So I was planning on sticking around?’ Harry says shyly, his cheeks a little pink. The words come out like a question, and god, Louis could be fucking this kid right now if it wasn’t for his own idiocy.

‘Well, we’ll see how good your fry-up is then. That’ll be the deciding factor,’ Louis laughs and pulls Harry down to his side, careful to cradle Harry’s bandaged hand between their bodies.

‘After that, will you fuck me?’ Harry says into the darkness and  _god_ , it’s taking all of Louis’s self-control not to flip Harry over right now but he’s still not sure Harry’s going to be there in the morning and to be honest, Louis isn’t even sure why he’d want Harry to be there in the morning. But he feels like if he wakes up and the bed is empty and cold, nothing is going to be the same and he won’t be able to go back to how he was. And that’s a scary thought.

‘You can’t just say shit like that, oh my god. But yes, if you make me a good enough omelette, I will perhaps bend you over my kitchen table. Happy?’ Louis muffles a laugh into Harry’s hair and he feels Harry’s stomach shaking against his as he holds in his stupid little boyish giggles.

Harry shuffles down, sliding against the sheets and really, this bed is too small for the both of them, but with Harry’s stomach pressed against Louis’s and his nose full of Harry’s hair and Harry’s arm flung over his waist, Louis’s not sure he would’ve wanted it any other way. And he falls asleep with the feeling of Harry’s fingers tapping a slow, sleepy rhythm on Louis’s hipbones and y’know, the kid with the drinking problem and the talented hands and the moony eyes, maybe he isn’t so bad.


	7. Chapter 6

At 8:43 AM, the sun rises. The reflection of the sun in the glass skyscrapers of New York casts a brilliant gleam on the yawning city, and the sleepy city-folk drag themselves from warm beds; the harsh white of freshly-fallen snow burns their eyes.

At 8:43 AM on Christmas morning, Louis wakes up in an empty bed, a strip of sunlight breaking over the windowsill. There is a head-shaped dent in the pillow next to him, but the rumpled sheets are cool, have been for hours. Louis pretends like his heart doesn’t sink when he looks around and the puddle of clothes at the end of the bed is gone.

 _Stupid, stupid, stupid_ , he tells himself, getting out of bed. His head pounds and his teeth are covered in slime, but the disappointment of waking up in an empty flat overshadows his physical discomfort.

Louis rolls over and buries his nose in the pillow next to him, inhaling the boyish smell left over from last night’s visitor. The previous night almost seems like a dream, those gem-like eyes glittering from the darkness, and Louis thinks he must’ve imagined the blissed-out look on Harry’s face as Louis straddled him in the small kitchen.

But as Louis slowly sits up, his head spinning, he knows he’s not imagining the inky black of permanent marker on his arm, a smear of letters and numbers from which Louis can pick out what seems to be a street address and a time.  _26 Canal Street 8 pm_ , written in blocky black letters in the crease of his elbow, and the tail of the 6 is a streak of black from where Louis must’ve moved his arm in his sleep.  

Fuck, it’s too early in the morning for this. Louis groans and flops back into the sheets, his head full of last night, of Harry’s long fingers around his wrists and the feel of his bony hips pressing into the insides of Louis’s thighs as Louis hovers over him, and oh fuck, Louis can feel himself getting hard at the memory of Harry’s head thudding against the wall behind him and the submissive nod of his chin when Louis had told him to stay still.

But Louis doesn’t really think it’s appropriate to wank off to someone you’ve shared only two or three conversations with, and when one of these conversations was with your tongue and hands, it’s even more inappropriate. Maybe. Or maybe more appropriate, whatever.

But now there’s this address and Louis’s seen the movies, he knows that when a midnight lover (does Harry count as a lover, since they didn’t sleep together?) writes an address and time on your arm before disappearing into icy mornings, you’re supposed to go to the address and be swept off your feet and maybe proposed to, or something stupid and cliché like that. Its either that or he shows up to the address and gets a knife in the throat in a dark alley or something. Somehow, Louis doesn’t really see the difference between being swept off his feet and being stabbed in the throat; they’re pretty much one and the same. Louis likes his feet firmly on the ground, thank you very much.

But the curly-haired fucker did leave this morning, and he never made Louis his fry-up, which means Louis is stuck with old milk and Frosted Flakes for breakfast, so Louis has a few choice words he’d like to say to Harry.

Louis gets out of bed, trips over his clothes from last night, swears violently, and takes a long hot shower, mostly spent trying not to think of Harry’s mouth and failing miserably.

He considers, with a heavy heart, whether he should show up to this address tonight. On the one hand, the thought of seeing Harry sends little trembles down Louis’s spine, shivers that he resolutely does not think of as giddiness. On the other hand, Louis has a sneaking suspicion that Harry is asking him on a date, which is fine and good, except that Louis doesn’t  _do_ dates, especially not with a random beautiful boy who definitely admitted to Louis the night before that he was messed-up. Louis thinks that the last thing he needs is to fall in love with a boy just as fucked-up as he is. No need for someone to mess up the carefully constructed façade of sanity that Louis wears like an old coat with hanging threads and a hole in the pocket, worn-out by years of “I’m fine” and “no, nothing is wrong”.

So Louis sits on the windowsill and smokes a cigarette and absently rubs a finger over the washed-out blank ink on his elbow, faint from his shower. He works his way through three cigarettes and watches the sun move in an arc over skyscrapers for hours before he thinks to open the window, and then he smokes another two out the window, watching the way the smoke lazily furls in curlicues through the frigid air.

When his throat is starting to burn from the cold air and the cigarettes, and his head is clear of the red of Harry’s mouth and the paleness of his hands, Louis picks up his phone and dials his mother.

“Boobear, Happy Christmas!” His mother’s shrill voice scratches down the line and Louis cringes, the sound grating against his hangover-sensitive ears.

“Hi, mum, Happy Christmas,” Louis says into the phone, tucking the phone into the hollow of his shoulder and putting another cigarette in between his lips, ignoring the fact that he’s almost finished a pack. His fingers tremble a bit, frozen from the cold wafting in the open window, but he manages to light the cigarette.

“How’s New York?” Jay asks, her voice cheerful, but so far away and Louis ignores the prickle in the corners of his eyes and blows out a mouthful of smoke into the frigid air.

“Good, good. Cold.” He refrains from telling her that he’s spent the majority of the holiday on his own, because he doesn’t want to hear the pity and instead he rattles off some lie about watching Christmas movies with Zayn. He’s just in the middle of relating some fake anecdote about Zayn when Jay interrupts him, saying,

“Lou, honey, are you okay?” Her voice is concerned, and Louis thinks his mother maybe knows him a little bit too well, can catch the wavering in his voice like she’s memorized the rise and fall of his moods and can hear it.

“Yes, Mum, I’m fine, why?” Louis glares out into the blinding sunlight.

“Nothing, nothing,” Jay trails off. There’s a pause, during which Louis takes a long drag on his cigarette and curls his tongue the way he knows so well to release a ring of smoke that dissipates into the air. “Are you smoking a cigarette right now?”

“No, Mum, I told you I gave it up,” Louis says, and then sucks a lungful of smoke in. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.

“Good, good, you know what a filthy habit that is,” Jay sounds pleased and really, that’s all Louis is aiming for, so he doesn’t feel bad about the bitter smoke curling in his throat and ignores the way it scratches against his vocal cords. His shoulder is starting to cramp from holding the phone there, but his fingers are busy. There’s a black smudge on his thumb from the marker on his arm. Louis ignores it.

“So really, dear, how are you?” Jay’s voice gets all intimate and chummy and Louis aches to tell her everything, spill his confusion about Harry and the deep exhaustion in his bones every time he thinks about Zayn. He remembers being 14 and sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea with Jay and telling her every piece of his day at school, laughing gleefully when she made snippy little comments about the teachers he complained about and trying not to squirm happily when she told him how proud she was of him for being so strong, thanking him for being such a help to the family. So much has changed between then and now. Now Louis sits on a windowsill 3000 miles away and his mouth is sewn shut by experiences she can never understand, however much he wants her to.

“I’m fine, Mum, really,” Louis says tiredly and he gives a little sad laugh.

“You don’t sound fine.” Jay’s voice is equally as sad. “Are you seeing anybody?”

At that, Louis chuckles bitterly and thinks of the look of his pale hands on the tawny skin of Zayn’s chest, and then the brilliant flash of Harry’s eyes collides with the golden skin of Zayn and Louis’s head feels too full, full of smoke and exhausted sadness and the gloss of Zayn’s voice and the rasp of Harry’s and the melancholy twist of Jay’s and he just. He wants to go home. But what is home? Is it his childhood bedroom, or is it the secure circle of Zayn’s arms or is it the streets of New York? Louis’s not even sure anymore.

“No, mum, not seeing anybody,” Louis laughs softly, a puff of breath emitting from his mouth and drifting away into the air. He stubs out the cigarette on the windowsill that’s had countless cigarettes snuffed out on it.

“What, American boys aren’t the same as English boys?” Jay teases, her voice light, and Louis knows, he knows that Jay is trying to ignore the potential heaviness of the conversation, and his heart hurts at the thought that they have to pretend and tiptoe around the shit that his life is these days.

“No, not at all,” Louis laughs and leans his head back against the window frame, closing his eyes and listening to the waterfall sound of Jay’s laugh as it floats down the line.

“Well, honey, then all the American boys are missing out,” Jay says, and Louis can hear the smile in her voice. “You just wait, one of those boys in your classes will catch your eye and then I’ll never get to talk to my favorite boy, because he’ll be off gallivanting around the big city with an American charmer.”

“Don’t worry, Mum, it’ll be a while before I’m settled down enough to be gallivanting around places,” Louis chuckles and already his heart feels lighter and he imagines the crinkles of Jay’s eyes when she smiles.

“Well, do me a favor, boo-bear, ok?” Jay asks.

Louis stretches his back and rests his forehead against the foggy glass of the window, the cold prickling his skin. “Sure, Mum, what is it?”

“Go on a date! When was the last time you went out with somebody to an actual restaurant? And I don’t mean Zayn!” Jay laughs and Louis is doused in cold as he thinks of how unwittingly his mother has landed on the one thing he’d been thinking about all day. God, how did she know how long it’d been since he’d gone on a date?

“Alright, Mum,” Louis says softly and right then, his mind is made up about Harry, and he thinks he’ll go to the address on his arm, if only for his mother, and if Harry asks why he decided to come, he won’t hesitate to tell the truth. If Harry thinks it’s weird that Louis’s going on a date because his mother told him to, then Harry could just fuck off.

 —-

 By 7 pm, Louis has changed his mind what feels like 25 times. He’s also eaten an entire pack of stale Oreos he found in the back of the cupboard. The mix of chocolate and cigarette smoke tastes too much like desperation and he throws up black gunk until his throat burns and he doesn’t know whether it’s from stomach acid or the stupid number of cigarettes he’s smoked that day. Louis has spent so much time on the windowsill that the glass of the window seems an old friend and he presses his forehead against it when he changes his mind yet again. The plastic frame of his glasses knocks against the window, the only noise in the apartment. He blows cool air on the glass, fogging it up, and then draws mindless shapes. Like a 12 year old girl, he writes  _Harry_  into the fog and then wipes it off and the condensation on his fingers tastes like metal when he touches his tongue to the pads of his fingers.

Louis pulls a pair of dark jeans on, blindly reaches for a shirt in his wardrobe. Runs his fingers through his hair. It sticks up and he thinks,  _good enough_.

He’s halfway to the elevator when he changes his mind again and for a good five minutes Louis stands in the hallway with a blank mind and an itch in his fingers for a cigarette. He ignores the phantom itch and takes the stairs. The stairwell smells like wet paint and he wrinkles his nose.

La Lune Noire is tucked under an eave heavy with snow. The number 26 shines brightly in gold plating next to little lamps and Louis braces himself because this is a restaurant, which means it’s no doubt a date.

 _Fuck this_ , he thinks. Fuck this stupid fucking restaurant, fuck the porcelain-boy with bones made of tissue paper, fuck those eyes like pieces of sea-glass, fuck that half empty bottle of whiskey hidden on top of the fridge, fuck the itch under his skin, fuck the caramel-skinned boy with a boarding pass to not-New York, and fuck the boy with a gaping fissure along his heart _. I am the boy with the gaping fissure along his heart_ , Louis thinks, and he walks into the restaurant with expectations so low they almost don’t exist.

He stands just inside the entrance of the restaurant and the hostess looks at him funny because he’s standing there with a blank look on his face, but he ignores her and cranes his head around, looking for a curly mop of hair or something, anything that would make this stupid fucking date worth it.

Ah, there he is, standing at the bar, of course. Louis rolls his eyes and slips around the hostess’s podium. Harry’s back is to Louis, but he can see him lift a glass of something clear to his lips and throw it back and Louis watches the way Harry’s throat swallows around the alcohol and something short circuits in Louis’s mind for a few seconds. Harry’s eyes are downcast, the green hidden by pale lids, and a single curl hangs over his forehead. As Louis watches Harry tilts his head forward, shakes his hair around with both hands, smooths it back and Louis doesn’t know whether it’s the sexiest thing he’s ever seen or the most adorable, but he’s going to go with sexiest because the strong line of Harry’s jaw and the look of his hands against the bar counter are doing things to Louis’s mind that he didn’t even know were possible.

There are too many people between Louis and the bar and he loses sight of Harry for a second when a large man in a trench-coat knocks into Louis. When the crowd shifts, Louis can see Harry with another glass in his hand and Louis remembers that Harry called himself an alcoholic. Well. Louis’s not surprised. He thinks back to the glazed look in Harry’s eyes the first night he saw him up close, the night in the convenience store. Louis remembers Harry throwing up in the alley and oh.  _Yeah_ , he thinks as he watches Harry down the glass,  _Harry and I might have more in common than I originally thought._

But then Harry turns around, green meet blue, blue this is green, and Louis’s heart falls out of his chest and he thinks,  _fuck you I refuse to fall in love with you._ Harry grins and eyes are saucer-wide and guileless, his smile so big that Louis thinks it must hurt his face, because he looks so giddy as to actually be in pain. Louis thinks  _where is that dark genius? And who is this 12 year old boy?_

“Louis,” Harry breathes, almost like he’s in disbelief that Louis is standing here in front of him. “You came.”

 And Louis thinks  _of course I’m here, where else would I be_  but he refuses to acknowledge the magnetic quality of Harry’s eyes and instead says,

“Well you did write on my arm with Sharpie, I figured that kind of boldness deserves a date.”

Harry throws back his head and laughs, loud and barking, the sound ringing in Louis’s ears and the other people at the bar look over and smile at the two boys.  _They think we are in love_ , Louis thinks and he finds that the thought doesn’t bother him like he thought it would, so he grins at Harry a little bit and watches as the boy’s eyes light up even more.

“Shall we?” Harry makes a grand sweeping gesture towards the sitting area of the restaurant and Louis smirks a little bit.

“Quite the gentleman, Harry,” he taunts, a diamond-coated gloss of sound, and Harry blushes, bites his lip, and Louis’s skin prickles at the memory of pulling Harry’s full lip between his own.

“I’m trying to apologize for running out on you this morning,” Harry laughs and puts his hand on the small of Louis’s back, under his coat and over his shirt, guiding him over to the seating area of the restaurant. Harry’s hand is huge and burns through Louis’s shirt, like his fingers send tendrils of heat into the base of Louis’s spine, and Louis imagines Harry as this creature with fire shooting from his fingertips.

Louis needs a drink. And a cigarette.

Wrenching his mind from the thought of Harry’s fingers, Louis concentrates on what Harry is saying and realizes he’s explaining why he had to leave this morning and Louis knows he should be listening because this is all he was thinking about all day, why this boy left Louis in cold sheets.

“…just completely blanked on it, but I woke up and you were still sleeping,” Harry is saying. “I just, I would’ve felt bad not doing it?” His words turn up like a question, a hesitation like he expects Louis to refute the truth of his words.

“Right, right…” Louis says absently.

“Did you even hear what I said?” A laugh like dirty emeralds with thumb-smudges, and it winds like honey around the burnt out synapses of Louis’s mind.

“No, no, I didn’t, sorry what was that?” Louis waves his hand vaguely towards the bar, attempting to indicate that it was too loud, but  _I was too busy tracing the threads of gold in your hazy eyes and counting the freckles in the shadows under your left eye._

Harry looks at him strangely, and Louis zeroes in on the more brilliant strip of green around his pupils.

“I played piano at the Salvation Army this morning?” There’s that hesitation again, and Louis wants to assure Harry that he’s hung, hook, line and sinker, on the silken edges of his questioning words but Louis’s throat seems to close up, and he thinks  _okay this boy is a saint I must go now._

“You are entirely too good for me, Curly,” Louis teases, his voice light as they sit down at a table draped with a white cloth and there is silverware rolled up in a serviette. Harry’s long fingers delicately unfold the linen cloth and put it on his knee and Louis is struck by the elegance of his knuckles twisting and moving, and the ivory skin pulled tautly over rounded skeletal bones. He imitates Harry’s motion.

“Am I?” The hollows under Harry’s eyes are thick with shadow, indigo in the flickering candlelight. His eyelashes are a smudge along the outer corners of his eyes and Louis thinks that he looks like a china doll, sans terrifyingly manic grin and all-seeing eyes. But he has the glossy ringlets and the milky skin and galaxies in his eyes. He is porcelain, Louis reminds himself, and porcelain and china are not so different.

“Very much so, yes.”

“How so?” Harry looks up through his eyelashes and he knows that Harry knows that the coy tilt of his head is working flawlessly and the word  _seduction_  flashes red on the insides of Louis’s eyelids.

“You played the piano at the Salvation Army on Christmas Day.”

“Yes? And?”

“And I ate a package of Oreos and smoked too many cigarettes on this holy day.”

Harry lets out a rasp of a laugh, so similar to last night’s, and his large hands clap over his mouth like the laugh was supposed to be a secret shared between the boys in flickering candlelight.

Louis cocks his head and considers Harry.

“So,” Louis says, winding his fingers together and propping them under his chin. He smiles a hunter’s smile at Harry and watches the tiny cracks at the corners of Harry’s mouth when he smiles tentatively back at Louis.

“So?”

“So Harry Styles, tell me about yourself.”  _Tell me about the cracks in your steel bones, peel back your skin and point out the throbbing arteries and give me a dictionary definition of your heart._

“So Louis,” Harry starts and then his eyebrows draw up and he giggles a little bit, mouth red like an apple, and says “I’ve just realized I don’t know your last name.”

“Not sure you really need to know that, actually.” It’s harsh, but it’s the truth. Last names make you searchable and Louis’s not sure that after tonight, he won’t want to fade back into an apathetic shadow and let Harry go. After all, Louis is almost certain that he could easily fall in love with this sinful boy (and isn’t love a smoky figure with a wooden-handled knife?) and well now, love isn’t a thing Louis does. Or perhaps love does not come to Louis; the semantics are beyond Louis’s mind. Regardless, Louis is a tectonic plate shifting along lines that would just be too easy for a pale boy with eyes to break open and put a telescope to.

Harry’s face drops a little bit and Louis thinks,  _sorry kid that’s the world for you_ because that’s easier than accepting the fact that Louis’s probably a bit of an asshole.

“Alright then,” Harry says slowly. “So, Louis no-name, tell me about yourself.”

“Asked you first, darling.”

There is a pregnant pause during which Louis reaches for a cigarette he knows is not in his pocket. He sighs and takes a sip of his ice-water instead.

Harry tilts his head at Louis. “Do you even want to be here right now?”

Louis laughs a high laugh that sounds too cold to his own ears, mocking and frigid and he almost feels bad, but he saves himself from kindness just in time. “Do you?”

“Yes,” Harry says, his voice slow and thick with confusion. “Why would I have asked you to dinner if I didn’t want to see you again?”

“So you aren’t going to stab me in the alley?”

Harry stares at Louis. It’s a simple fixation of galactic eyes and Louis thinks the planes of his heart are wide and exposed by Harry’s piercing gaze.

“No. No I am not going to stab you in the alley.”

“Well, that’s a relief, Harry, I do have to admit.” Louis lowers his voice and leans forward, his tone soft but his mind heavy with Harry’s eyes and mouth and the look of his hands resting lightly on top of the tablecloth.

And at 8:43 PM on Christmas day, Louis thinks maybe he’s fallen in lust with the porcelain boy and he thinks maybe, maybe, the porcelain boy has fallen in love with the boy with a fissured heart, and well. That just won’t do, because porcelain is made from heated glass and Louis is glass, but he is cold and the ice within him will crack the porcelain of Harry’s skin and the jagged notes of Louis’s silver-tongue will rip the soft edges of Harry’s tissue-paper bones.

And so the night wanes on and the candles cast shadows on the panoramic walls and Louis pretends like he is not falling in love.

They play 20 questions as Harry twirls fettuccine on his fork and Louis leans over and licks a drop of sauce off Harry’s face and it’s all so sickeningly romantic that the soles of Louis’s feet itch to run away, but something holds him there. Maybe it’s the funny scrunch of Harry’s eyes every time he throws back his head to laugh at a ridiculous answer of Louis’s; maybe it’s Harry’s face softening as Louis talks about his sisters. And Louis pretends like he is in lust with the curl of Harry’s scarlet mouth, not in love with the rough glide of his sweet voice, and he pretends like he wants to look at Harry’s face because it’s just stupidly pretty, not because the knowing glint in his eyes makes Louis want to jump off a bridge, hand in hand with Harry, and scream out his darkest secret while plummeting into a river.

So Louis pretends and Harry laughs and Louis smiles with fangs bared and Harry smiles with dimples and the ice on Louis’s bones thaws.

“So we’ve covered backgrounds, favorite colors, films, artists, goals in life and every other thing that this game is supposed to accomplish.” Harry wipes his mouth with his serviette and grins at Louis. There’s a dot of sauce at the corner of his mouth. Louis smiles to himself and doesn’t tell Harry.

“We have, haven’t we?” Louis leans back in his seat and chuckles. “I think you’ve still got one more question.”

Harry leans forward and his eyes seem to recess back into his face. He leans his chin on one hand. His shirt shifts to the side a little bit and Louis can see the purple tinged edges of that goddamn bruise and Louis thinks,  _oh yes I have fallen in lust with you._

“Have you ever been in love?” Harry’s voice is shy, his eyes cast down, lashes casting monstrous shadows on his pale rounded cheeks.

Louis ponders the idea of love. In life, we are given two choices, he thinks. One is to welcome love with open arms and jump off a cliff into waters that will most likely drown you and leave you at the bottom of a tide. The other is turn 90 degrees and let the brunt of love hit your shoulder, let it bounce off the bunched tendons and fall into the ground with a harsh cry, and then you turn another 90 degrees and walk away, with your back to love.

In both scenarios, love exists in a godforsaken universe and it is a decision made with nerves that will determine whether you are pulled into the undertow or whether you live life with a bruised shoulder but a wholly untouched heart. Untouched by the sweetness of love, yes, but untouched also by the damning characteristics of an emotion that burns cities, takes nations to war, and is a cruel destroyer of the fragile constitution of a loved man’s soul. The loved man’s life is a tragic tale of footsteps in sand that are washed away by tides, and the loved man eternally lives in solitude because no human being loves in the exact same way as his neighbor. And so in love, we cease to exist, because the tragedy of this world is that we are damned to love or be alone, and yet they are one and the same.

And Louis considers the stroke of a paintbrush on canvas at three AM in an old building that smells of paint and turpentine. He thinks of hair as black as a crow’s wing; skin the color of burnt caramel and fingers stained by nicotine.

Love is for fools with unsteady hearts, Louis thinks.

“No, I have never been in love,” Louis breaks the silence. He stares at the condensation on his glass and does not acknowledge the feel of long fingers plucking at his heart like it’s a guitar to be played.

When Louis looks up, Harry’s eyes are large and wide, innocent like the man in the undertow, and Louis wonders whether Harry has ever been in love but somehow, Louis can’t bring himself to care about the answer and he knows, he knows, he has fallen in lust with this boy, but never in love.

Harry opens his mouth and then closes it again, as if he thinks better of what he was going to say and Louis thinks  _yes, yes, don’t ask the question that you can taste on the tip of your tongue._

“Did you fall in love with the painter?”

And Louis closes his eyes in resignation because _no, no, you were not supposed to ask that question and now you’ve gone and fucked everything up._

“You’re out of questions,” Louis says softly, avoiding Harry’s eyes.

“You have one left,” Harry murmurs and Louis can see him reaching across the table with his large hand but Louis moves his hands off the table and into his lap and Harry’s hands still and Louis thinks  _sorry kid that’s the world for you._

“Think I’ll keep it, actually,” Louis looks up and grins and it feels too razor sharp after the delicacy of their conversation but how better to diffuse suffocating tension than with a smile worn by villains? “Save it for another time.”

Harry laughs softly and it sounds relieved. “So you admit there will be another time?”

“Well,” Louis cocks his head and taps his fingers under his chin, “that depends.”

“On what?”

“Guess I’ll leave that for you to figure out, darling,” Louis laughs that high laugh that makes any man’s blood run cold.

Harry nods his head. They look at each other, blue this is green, green meet blue. Their plates are taken away, the candles burnt low and they take turns seeing who can hold their finger in the flame for longer. It is a masochistic game and it thrills Louis and he likens the sear in his finger to the choking burn in his chest as he watches the way Harry coquettishly looks up from under his eyelashes and Louis thinks  _lust, oh yes lust._

“You know, I never did fulfill my promise from last night,” Louis muses thoughtfully, his finger floating in and out of the flame.

“What did you promise me last night?”

“And, I mean, you didn’t fulfill yours either,” Louis continues as if he hasn’t heard Harry, “but I don’t see why that means I shouldn’t hold up my end of the bargain. You did take me out to dinner after all.”

Harry looks at him, his face carefully blank as he waits for Louis to start making sense.

“I do believe I promised to bend you over my kitchen table.” It’s Louis’s turn to look up from under his eyelashes, and it’s not lost on either of them that Louis is bargaining with Harry, that he leaves Harry with a choice. They can go to Louis’s flat and lie in sweet sheets and taste the salt on each other’s skin and in the morning, a part of their heart will belong to the other and they will be irrevocably and painfully entwined and they will wonder if the night was worth being bound together. Or they can part ways with a chaste kiss and say  _it was nice to meet you_ and meet tomorrow’s ignorance with a smile. Louis offers a way out, a way for each of them to keep their hearts intact. And Harry’s decision is what their second meeting will depend upon.

Harry leans back in his chair and seems to stew over his decision before he stands up suddenly, shocking Louis with the quick movement, so different from the slow lolling pace of his voice. He extends a long pale hand to Louis and says,

“Well, let’s get going then. Mustn’t keep your kitchen table waiting.” And Louis knows that Harry thinks the sun will rise alongside a promise and he thinks,  _no luck kid you’ve got a broken heart coming your way_ because Harry’s heart is glass but Louis’s is titanium.

Louis’s spine tingles when Harry helps him with his coat and he wants to tell Harry to back off, he can put his coat on himself, but the pleased look in Harry’s eyes when he doesn’t say anything but  _thank you_  is enough to let him continue being the gentleman he so obviously wants to be. Louis wonders if Harry is trying to impress him, and laughs inside, because  _dear, nothing impresses me anymore._

It’s started to snow again when they walk out of the restaurant and their feet leave messy footprints in the as-of-yet-untouched powder. Harry tangles his fingers with Louis’s and Louis lets him, because Harry made his decision and it’s not Louis’s problem if Harry wants to pretend his heart is titanium too.

The streets are quiet, like they are only during a holiday, secluded in this city that breathes in gusts and swells like a living creature. Their footsteps are quiet in the wondering world, the snow blanketing all the noise.

“Do you ever miss home?” Harry asks, as they walk down Canal Street, past the doors with wreathes on them and the streetlamps with golden beams of light broken up by the gently falling snow.

“All the time,” Louis concedes softly.

“And why do you not go home more often?” Harry looks at him out of the corner of his eye, Louis can feel it but he looks resolutely ahead.

“I believe that New York holds answers for me,” Louis speculates slowly. “Or, rather, I don’t know if I believe that the answers are here, but I would like them to be.”

“What answers are those?”

“Well, if I knew them, I wouldn’t still be looking for them,” Louis chuckles and Harry’s cherry mouth pulls into a rose of color and he laughs, the echoes ringing around in the silent street, and then he sobers.

“I, too, search for answers,” Harry says so quietly, Louis is not sure whether he was meant to hear or not, so he doesn’t reply.

They come to a stop under a streetlamp that throws a circle of honey light onto the white snow and Harry puts his spider’s fingers around Louis’s wrist, and pulls him around until they face each other and behind Harry there are shadows and behind Louis there are shadows but in this three foot circle of space there is LouisandHarry and the amber glow all around them.

“I really want to kiss you right now,” Harry whispers, his face too close to Louis’s and his eyes are big and wide, hazy with golden threads. Louis counts the spaces in between Harry’s eyelashes and thinks,  _oh but for lust or for love and I, I shall be in the undertow._

“I’m not stopping you-” and Louis is cut off by the soft press of cherry lips and he sighs contentedly and wonders how he lived before he knew the tattoo of Harry’s lips against his own. Under his coat, under his shirt, he can feel fingers scratch gently at his hip and fuck, this kiss is nothing like the kiss last night. Harry takes Louis’s head in his hands and carefully, because Harry knows that Louis is made of sapphire glass, tips him back and sucks Louis’s bottom lip into his mouth and it’s a hot slide of tongues.

If a man was standing on the roof of a building and looked down at the corner of Canal and 3rd, he would see a short boy and a tall boy and he would think  _and here, here is the repeated image of a lover destroyed._ And he would see the halo of light encircling them and he would think  _do not step out of that halo of gold, for the shadows behind you are fraught with the unknown and beware, lest you be taken into the undertow._

But step out they do, and Harry lets go of Louis’s face and their lips separate with a quiet sigh from each and Harry’s mouth is red like a Spanish sun, eyes dazed, and Louis’s lips feel bruised in the most beautiful way. And he thinks,  _oh but for lust or for love, and I am in the undertow_.

The rest of the walk back to Louis’s flat is quiet, that solitude of lovers’ during which thoughts are exchanged in the silky space but no sound is expressed.

The ride up the elevator feels alarmingly similar to last night’s, but Louis’s skin does not prickle like it did last night; rather it burns, with the feel of long fingers trailing around his hips under his shirt. Harry stands behind him and kisses the back of his neck repeatedly until Louis think he’s going to collapse into jelly.

Outside his door, Harry gently pushes Louis up against the wall and nips filthily at his bottom lip, pulling it out. It stretches obscenely and the image of the picture of Louis and Zayn flashes through the front of Louis’s mind until he bats it away and kisses Harry back, a sweet press of closed lips.

“God, you drive me mad,” Harry murmurs, trailing his lips down Louis’s throat, his breath tickling and Louis squirms and his head falls back against the wall.

“And you, you as well,” Louis tries to say breathlessly, but his sentence is cut off by the dirty roll of Harry’s hips against his own and fuck, if he doesn’t get this boy into his bed very soon, he’s going to explode.

Harry reaches behind Louis, into his back pocket, and pulls out his key, not breaking the kiss. He unlocks the door and they stumble in backwards, Harry laughing loudly against the side of Louis’s face and his arms holding Louis up as their feet tangle together.

“Hello, Lou,” a voice like burnt topaz says slowly, carefully, and Louis jerks back from Harry and there, there on the floor is the caramel-skinned boy with a boarding pass to not-New York and Louis wants to run into his arms and breathe in that cigarette scent, but Louis’s also got a porcelain boy on his arm, and what do you do?

And here is the repeated image of a lover destroyed.

Louis reaches out a hand to Zayn, and he’s not sure whether it’s a  _hello_  or not, but Zayn stands up, a joint hanging loosely between his dark raspberry lips, and takes Louis’s hand. Harry watches the motion of Louis’s fingers as they clasp around Zayn’s.

Zayn is looking too closely at Harry, and Louis wants to throw a sheet over Harry and say  _no, mine, do not touch_  but there’s so much belligerence in that gaze, Louis knows it’s not simply a curious look at who his flat-mate brought home on a snowy night. Zayn’s tawny eyes flash dangerously at Harry and the curly-haired boy looks too understanding for Louis’s liking.

Louis, with one hand clasped in Harry’s hand and one threaded through Zayn’s fingers, steps closer to Harry and drops Zayn’s hand and Zayn turns away.

“Um, maybe I should go?” Harry says softly, his fingers stroking the soft skin under Louis’s jaw and Louis wants to say  _no, stay, I want you to stay_  but they both know that too many unspoken things have happened tonight for this to be okay.

Louis glances at Zayn out of the corner of his eye. He’s sitting on the floor again, but his eyes are ruthlessly trained on Harry and Louis, and Louis feels Harry flinch a little bit. Louis understands. It hurts to look at Zayn sometimes, he is too brilliant and beautiful and he knows Harry can feel the heat with which Zayn is glaring at him.

“That’s the painter?” Harry murmurs in Louis’s ear and goosebumps erupt on the back of Louis’s neck, but he nods and grasps Harry’s arm in his fingers. He reaches over to the table beside the door and grabs a pen and quickly scribbles his number on the soft area of skin between Harry’s thumb and first finger. He thinks _watch this, Zayn, watch me. You think your painter’s fingers own my dramatic soul but your chains are forged with weakness and I can fuck whatever porcelain boy I want._

“Now we’re even.” He looks up and Harry nods, and then lets himself out the door. It clicks softly behind him and then the silence in the flat is overwhelming and Louis resists the urge to rush out the door.

Louis shrugs his coat off, flings it over the back of the couch, and walks over to Zayn. He drops down next to him and Zayn turns his head to look away from Louis. Louis swallows thickly and lies down next to Zayn, his face buried in his neck and he breathes in that familiar scent of sienna ink and cigarettes.

“You’re back early. How was your Christmas?” Louis asks softly, his words muffled in the smooth skin of Zayn’s neck. Zayn has made no attempt to put his arm around Louis, but he hasn’t pushed him off yet either and Louis counts himself lucky.

Zayn does not answer though. For once in his life, Louis doesn’t know what to say, so he just continues talking as if Zayn has answered.

“Good, good, I’m glad. Mine was good too, thanks for asking,” Louis’s mind runs on terrified adrenaline, words spilling out of his mouth and he wants to cup his hands under his mouth, catch the stupid words, and shove them back in. But he can’t stop talking.

“What was that? No, I’m not sleeping with piano guy. No, but I was ridiculously drunk last night, as was he, and I picked him up in a bar and brought him home, but no, no we didn’t fuck. But yeah, my Christmas was great.” Louis rambles into Zayn’s neck and listens to the soft inhales of Zayn’s breath, watches the glint of light in the small earring in Zayn’s earlobe and he wants to bite it, but he’s not sure that’s really allowed anymore.

There is silence. And then,

“Lou, what are you doing?” Zayn’s voice is sad, the words strung with a melancholy vibrato and Louis’s heart aches for what he has done to Zayn.

“It’s nothing,” Louis sighs and he prays that Zayn takes his word for it.

But Zayn, Zayn who saw the bottom of his soul and loved him still, of course hears the lying tremors under Louis’s voice and he swears suddenly.

“Goddamnit, Louis, it’s not nothing, it never is!” His voice is harsh, but he still won’t look at Louis, even when Louis sits up and stares down at his face. Zayn looks away from him and his razor cheekbones speak in fucking melodies to Louis, a blunt rejection.

“Zayn, my burdens are not yours to carry,” Louis says softly and Zayn snorts.

“Like hell. Fuck, Lou, if he breaks your heart, you know who has to pick up the pieces.”

Louis is silent and he thinks  _I am an unwanted Christmas tree._

“I can’t do this,” Zayn mutters darkly and stands up, walks out of the room, leaving Louis on the floor and Louis has never been so cold in his life.

And so a man is either in love or he is alone and yet the two are inescapably intertwined; man cannot be in love without being eternally alone. Yet when alone, man thirsts for love and so love dominates his every move, but it is not from the abundance of love, but despite the absence of it.

Louis thinks  _and_   _I, I am in the undertow._

At exactly 12:43, four hours after Louis fell in lust (or was it love?) with Harry, and 16 hours after Louis woke up in an empty bed, he crawls into a bed with a boy already in it, a boy with skin like burnt caramel, hair like a crow, and fingers stained by nicotine.

“I won’t let him break me, you know,” Louis drags his lips up Zayn’s bare chest, sliding his tongue through the sparse dark hairs on Zayn’s chest and he watches the way Zayn pulls a ragged breath through his teeth, the sound of it whistling a little bit. “I don’t even know if I’m seeing him again.” Louis drags his teeth over the small numb of Zayn’s nipple and listens to the sweet catch of breath.

Zayn sighs deeply and speaks. “Lou, it’s not up to me whether you see him again. But there’s a pattern here, can’t you see it?” He threads his fingers through Louis’s hair and pulls gently, making Louis look up from Zayn’s chest. Zayn’s eyelashes are immensely long in the dark. “These boys, they’re lovely and charming and perfect until they’re not and then you’re crawling into my bed at 4 in the morning with a bottle of vodka and a jar of massive issues. And I can only sew you up so many times.”

“Don’t sew me up then,” Louis whispers breathlessly. “Break me open.”

Zayn groans, long and guttural, and hauls Louis up his chest, their mouths meeting in a clash of lips and teeth and it’s so disarmingly different from the kiss under the streetlamp with Harry that Louis almost cries. Zayn’s thumbs stroke whorls into Louis’s cheekbones and his hips meet Louis’s in a dirty thrust that has Louis crying out and clamping his teeth on Zayn’s throat, tasting that sienna ink and Louis thinks, _Harry tasted like lavender bruises_.

So perhaps this is where things end. Louis is a boy with wanderlust stitched to his heart and he walks and roams the plains of the undertow. And perhaps in all that roaming, he meets a boy with a scarlet heart that matches the bloom of his mouth and eyes green like the starbursts of color over a galactic landscape. But in the end, a boy with copper skin reaches in and pulls him out when the wandering becomes too dangerous.

And as Zayn rips Louis’s shirt off and attaches his mouth to Louis’s collarbones, Louis’s mind drifts to the boy with a scarlet heart, and he wonders if Harry is thinking about him and in that moment, Louis thinks _and_   _I, I am in the undertow, but the boy with the scarlet heart lives there as well._


	8. Chapter 7

Louis is lying on his back on the floor of the living room, his drama notes lying discarded next to him. The air is thick with the acrid smell of pot and Louis is quite warm. He’s wrapped in too many sweaters and sweat prickles the back of his neck, but his limbs are too heavy to take off the sweaters. Zayn sits by the window with his feet propped up on the window frame, a cigarette dangling from his lips. The only noise in the flat is the occasional rustle as Zayn turns the pages of his book, and the small huffs of Louis’s breath as he lazily inhales the musky smoke of his joint. It’s peaceful, for once. No screeching violins, no German opera, just the faint sound of car horns and the comforting whisper of Zayn blowing smoke out the tiny crack in the window.

Louis slowly rolls his head to look at Zayn. Zayn’s long fingers gracefully hold the edges of the pages and in Louis’s mindless state, he likens Zayn’s fingers to the roots of an old tree, strong and gnarled and splattered with the paint of the ages.

"What are you reading?" he asks, the words thick and syrupy in his throat. He giggles a bit at the sound of his own voice.

"The Iliad," Zayn answers, not looking up from his book. He’s quiet, like he has been since the night Harry was here.

Harry hasn’t called. Louis resolutely does not care. Louis had woken up the morning after with his nose in the soft hairs behind Zayn’s ear, with Zayn’s hand fitting perfectly in the hollow of his hip. Louis had thought of Harry’s huge hands and realized that they probably wouldn’t curl so easily in the concave dip of Louis’s waist, and he had decided right then and there that Zayn’s hands were the only ones he wanted on him. Let somebody else have Harry’s scarlet mouth and his too-easily-broken heart. Louis and Zayn had a rhythm that rushed in Louis’s blood and he would have been off tempo without the steady beat of Zayn’s heart next to him.

"What’s it about?" Louis asks, even though he knows. He’s seen the movie. He probably paid more attention to Brad Pitt’s abs than to what was actually happening, but he wants to hear Zayn’s voice because the silence in the flat is screaming in Louis’s ears.

"The gods. And how they manipulate the events of this war." Zayn licks his finger past his cigarette and turns the page.

Louis is silent again, until he can’t stand it. He crawls on hands and knees over to Zayn and rests his chin on Zayn’s thigh.

Zayn finally looks down at him and smiles softly, and if Louis was looking carefully, he’d see a little sadness. His caramel eyes are fond and Louis feels a small rush of pleasure shiver through him and he smiles back.  Zayn moves his hand from his sweatshirt pocket and runs his fingers through the feathery fringe that hangs limply over Louis’s forehead. Louis nudges into it and breathes in the scent of fresh laundry from Zayn’s sweatpants, feels his stubble catch on the soft cotton. Louis hasn’t shaved in days. No point, Zayn likes the roughness and the slight burn.

“Why’re they fighting a war?” Louis asks into the smooth skin of Zayn’s wrist. He smells a bit like cigarettes and paint. There’re a few specks of blue paint marring the paler skin of his wrist and Louis licks at them. Tastes like salt.

“Paris steals Helen away from King Menelaus, so the Greeks go to war against the Trojans. Achilles is in here too.” Zayn knocks his bare feet against the glass a few times and strokes a thumb over the wrinkles in Louis’s forehead. “Agamemnon gets pretty pissed at Achilles a lot, s’part of the reason the war is so fuckin’ long.”

“Brad Pitt, right?” Louis asks, biting gently at Zayn’s wrist. Zayn snorts and tugs on Louis’s hair.

“Yeah, Brad Pitt,” he chuckles and knocks Louis’s chin with his knee.

“Always liked Achilles,” Louis sighs dreamily. God. It’s so easy, this. Just sitting here, mouth on the silky skin of Zayn’s wrists, the sunlight streaming in, and no boys with confusing smiles and stupid glass hearts just asking to be shattered. Just Zayn and his comfort and his security and all the love. Louis wishes for the thousandth time that he and Zayn could run away from this toxic city and all its secrets and all the lies and the people it’s hiding, and just live on the beach somewhere, anywhere, and make deep imprints in the sand with their bodies and share salty kisses in the waves. It’d be so easy too.

“What are the gods doing?” Louis flicks his tongue over the spidery veins in Zayn’s wrists, listens to the way Zayn’s breath catches in his throat.

Zayn hums a little bit, knocks his knee against Louis’s shoulder. His eyelashes fan against his cheekbones. Hurts a little to look at him, Louis thinks. Zayn could be a god. A Greek god. Louis is high.

“They make things happen. Move people around. Change fate, I guess.”

“Oh Zayn, darling, do you believe in fate?” Louis looks up at Zayn through is eyelashes and giggles. He taps his fingers against Zayn’s knee, feeling the bony cap through his soft sweatpants. There’s a rhythm, one with no name. The rhythm of the swish of blood in Louis’s veins, the rhythm of a glass heart, the rhythm of the cars in the street. Life has a rhythm, Louis thinks. It bounces and it’s full of quarter notes and half rests and fermatas, and Louis wants to capture the thrill and lock it up and tuck it away on top of the refrigerator. Take the beat of Zayn’s heart and thrust it into his own. Share it. Glass hearts break pretty easily. Titanium hearts endure.

“Yeah,” Zayn says seriously. His eyebrows knit together and Louis stops giggling. “I do.”

And all of a sudden, the rhythm comes to a halt and Louis’s fingers stop tapping and he falls back against the floor. Well, fuck fate. He knocks his head against the floor a few times and closes his eyes. The silence is a thousand candles flickering. It overwhelms Louis, and vibrates in his fingertips. Fuck fate.

“Louis.”

“Yeah.”

“Where’s Harry?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

“Louis.”

“Fuck.”

“Do you believe in fate?”

Louis scoffs and opens his eyes. The sunlight streaming in the window illuminates the dust particles in the air and Louis feels the gliding liquid melting in his veins as he looks up at Zayn’s face, his tall hair lit from behind, and his wide and concerned eyes.

“Fuck fate, Zayn. Fate is for people who don’t have the balls to accept reality.” Louis crosses his arms behind his head, kicks his feet up to balance next to Zayn’s on the windowsill. Knocks their feet together. “Fate doesn’t exist. The world is shit. Shit just happens, ‘cause we’re all shitty people and we all deserve our shitty ends.”

“Well, shit, Lou,” Zayn bites out. He snaps his book shut with a loud clap. Dust rises from the edges. “That’s charming, really.” He swings his feet off the windowsill, knocking Louis’s off, and stalks off into the kitchen.

Louis’s shit, really. That’s what it comes down to. He’s shit for messing Harry around in the club, he’s shit for being a dickhead at the restaurant, and he’s shit for fucking around with Zayn. The rounded knuckles of Zayn’s fists would fit so nicely in the hollowed temples of Louis’s head. Louis almost wishes Zayn would just take a swing at him, take him out of his misery.

Louis’s veins are scorched. With Zayn, with Harry, with life. He’s got nothing left. He’s thought about it, too much, all the time, so much recently. So much since Harry, since the first night he saw him in that club. Louis is dried up, his blood has turned to salt, his bones are crackled and brittle. His breath comes from Zayn; his energy comes from those around him. Louis exists in the people he associates with. If it was possible, Louis would step out of himself, abandon Louis Tomlinson, and just live inside other people far cleverer and more talented than he is. Why let Harry live in the cracks in his dried and crumbling bones when Louis doesn’t even know the planes of his own heart? How could Louis live with himself if he let Harry in on the giant secret that is Louis’s own terrible disappointment with the miracle of life?

And that’s why Louis has no idea where the fuck Harry is, has no idea why he cares so much where Harry might be, and why he doesn’t believe in fate. Was it fate that Louis would lose himself? Was it fate that stepped in the night he and Harry came home from the restaurant, saturated with lust and anticipation of fevered skin, was it fate that led Zayn to coming home a day early?

Fuck fate. Louis’s too burnt for fate.

His phone rings.

And rings, and rings, and rings. Beyoncé’s Single Ladies blares into the quiet apartment, over and over again. One missed call, two missed calls, three missed calls. Louis’s phone is five feet away, five feet too many. He ignores them all.

Louis is a single lady. He snorts to himself.

His phone rings again and Zayn appears in the doorway.

“Gonna answer that?”

“Nope,” Louis answers languidly. “It is fate that I shall miss these calls. It is fate that I shall never check my missed calls. And it is fate that I shall never know who called me twenty three hundred times on December 31st. It’s too bad, isn’t it?”

Louis hears rather than sees Zayn roll his eyes.

Then the ringing stops, Louis is no longer a single lady languishing in singledom, and Zayn is saying “hello” into the phone.

Louis sits up. That fucker. Answering his calls. The nerve.

“Hello, Harry,” Zayn says into the phone. His eyes are trained on Louis, seeing right through him and all his shitty shittiness. Louis’s stomach flips over, his heartbeat goes triple time, and he hates himself for such a reaction to the knowledge that Harry exists, he’s in this world, his voice is still real, still that raw and unadulterated rasp that Zayn is listening to right now. Louis thinks he might’ve convinced himself that Harry had been a dream.

There’s a tinny sound coming from the phone, Harry’s voice, and Zayn’s mouth curls into a bitter smile. The soles of Louis’s feet ache to know what Harry has said. God, he’s such a child. Fucking children. Fucking Harry. Fucking Zayn. Louis wants to throw the lot of them out the window.

“Well, he’s here, but he’s not exactly available,” Zayn chuckles darkly. “He’s busy not believing in fate. Can I take a message?”

Louis scrambles up and stands in front of Zayn, his hands on Zayn’s wrists, thumbs on his pulse point. Does Louis want to talk to Harry? God, fuck, he can’t even answer the first question. He decides no, thinks that he’d probably collapse in a lusty haze if he heard the quiet thrill of Harry’s voice. He’d be forced to remember the feel of Harry’s lips at his throat, the feel of his giant hands against the small of Louis’s back, the way his fingers fit into the grooves of Louis’s hips. Louis would forget every promise he made to himself the morning after, promises involving sobriety, and a lifelong appreciation of Zayn’s stability, and very un-glass-like heart.

Titanium’s great for a lot of things, but Louis’s not willing to test its strength against the memory of red raw lips and dazed eyes with the reflection of snow and shadows in them.

“Yeah, I told him I did. Why, do you?” Zayn is still standing in the middle of the room, Louis’s shitty cell phone up to his ear. His sweatpants hang so low on his hips, Louis can see the strip of brown skin between the bottom of his sweatshirt and his waistband. A few hairs on his stomach. His hipbones jut out.

Harry had hipbones. Harry had pretty nice hipbones. From what Louis remembers. Actually, Harry had pretty nice everything. Harry was a goddamn angel. Not in the halo-wearing, innocent kind, but the kind that Michelangelo tried to recreate, the kind that seems to be created by aliens, because what combination of genes could possibly have produced such exquisiteness?

Louis’s s getting carried away, he just wants to know what Zayn already told him.

“Do you really, mate? Do you? Because I swear to fucking god if you fuck around with him, I will hunt you down.” Zayn’s eyebrows are pulled down so far, his eyes have receded back into his head and if Louis didn’t know any better, he’d be a little scared of Zayn.

There’s silence on Zayn’s end of the phone conversation, just a quiet hum that Louis knows must be Harry on the other end. Louis would give his right arm to be hearing what Harry is saying, and his left arm to be so far from that room that the memory of Harry would cease to exist.

“Tonight?”

“I’m aware of that.”

“I mean, fuck, I don’t-“

“Yeah. Yeah, yeah.”

Zayn shoves his free hand into his sweatshirt pocket and glares at Louis from underneath his stupid eyelashes. Louis’s fingers itch.

“He’ll be there.”

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Zayn holds the phone out to Louis.

“Says you guys are fate.” He shrugs.

Louis’s heart stutters a few times, trips over a speed-bump and picks itself up in time to put the phone up to his ear.

“Louis?”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, it’s Harry.”

“No shit.”

Harry clears his voice awkwardly and laughs nervously. What the fuck does he have to be nervous about? Louis is the one standing here with his psychotic over-possessive best friend breathing down his neck. Louis is the one with all the fissures, and the boy with the glass-heart knocking to come in. Harry’s just some kid with enough balls to call up another guy. Fuck, sometimes Louis wants to fucking gag his brain.

“So fate, huh?” Louis asks. He turns around and walks away from Zayn, back to the armchair that Zayn recently vacated. He flops down and taps his feet nervously against the wall.

Harry clears his voice noisily. There’s a rustle on his end of the line, like he’s switched the phone to his other ear. Louis can’t help but imagine where Harry is. Is he sitting in a coffee-shop somewhere? Or is he standing in his kitchen? God, what if he’s lying in bed? Lord, Louis shouldn’t be having thoughts like that.

“Um, I mean-”, he stutters. “I mean, I dunno, it’s pretty weird that I keep seeing you everywhere, isn’t it?”

“Could be that the universe is playing a trick on us, darling,” Louis laughs coldly and pointedly looks away from Zayn rolling his eyes and meandering out of the living room.

Harry hums and it echoes into a buzzing down the phone-line. “Maybe. So you don’t believe in fate then?”

“Definitely not. A reason for everything that happens?” Louis scoffs. “Ridiculous. If there was some higher purpose in life, I’d not have a reason for it.”

“Reason for what?”

“Well, living, of course,” Louis says. “What’s the point in living when everything’s decided beforehand?”

There’s silence over the phone.

“You confuse me, Louis.” Harry says quietly, as if he’s pondering the idea of Louis. Louis’s not sure he likes being thought of as confusing, but it’s better than easy, isn’t it? At least he’s being thought of.

“That’s what I’m here for, young Harold.” Louis laughs softly and wonders if there’s a point to this phone call, whether Harry is going to remind Louis that he owes him a good fuck, or if this call is simply to let Louis know exactly what he’s throwing away.

 Louis knows what he’s giving up; this boy with eyes like stars, he’s got hands painted with a poison that will seep into Louis’s blood and will ruin him from within. He’s got a mouth that’ll suck Louis’s soul out of his lungs, and while Louis’s not even confident of the stability of his own soul, at least he’s got one, and he’s not willing to sacrifice himself to this boy who seems like he’s going to break any minute.

 Louis’s fingertips are also tinged with a self-made poison, a toxicity that rots his bones with its cruelty, but at least it’s his own poison. The light that glides through Louis’s bones, that make him appreciate a good fuck or a good meal or the soft skin of Zayn’s elbows, that light streams live from the grandeur of the world that Louis lives in. It’s not his. He lives on borrowed time, on borrowed light. But the poison, that’s made in the warehouses of Louis’s own soul, and it burns everything he touches. Hence why at the end of this phone call, Louis is well aware that he should relish the sound of Harry’s voice, because knowing Louis’s tendency to give up on the boys he deems liable to break him, it will be the last time Louis exalts in the thrill of his voice.

“Did the painter tell you why I called?” Harry says, his words tilting up at the ends.

“His name is Zayn,” Louis says coldly.

“I know.”

“So call him that.”

“I don’t feel like I can,” Harry says bluntly. “Feels a bit too private, innit? You won’t even let me look at him.”

A shiver runs down Louis’s arms at the memory of Harry holding that picture of him and Zayn, and well, Harry’s right, Louis knows that he likes to keep Zayn locked up inside him.

“Fine. No, he did not tell me why you called.”

“Oh.” Harry coughs awkwardly. “Well, actually, a mate of mine is having a New Years party tonight.”

“Yes, and?” Louis questions, bitingly.

“Um, well, I was wondering if you’d like to come?”

Damnit. Louis knows perfectly well he shouldn’t let himself be near Harry and alcohol in the same room. But god, the temptation. His brain screams at him that it’s the worst choice he’ll ever make if he goes to this party. His heart, or whatever organ it is that makes all of Louis’s decisions, tells him that to have alcohol singing in his blood and a warm Harry just a few feet away will solve all his problems. And that perhaps seeing Harry this one last time, and getting him out of his system, will break Louis of this addiction to Harry’s eyes and his mouth and his entire being. Addiction it is, because Louis craves the pure light in Harry’s eyes, thirsts for it like a potent drug. Just like the poison in Louis’s blood is manufactured by chemists in his own blistered soul, Harry delicately creates his light with fingers dancing over ivory keys. His light is his own, sheltered from people like Louis. He wants Harry’s light, for himself, and to witness it happening. Harry blinds him, and everyone knows that humans have a knack for choosing that which will destroy them. Louis is no different.

“Zayn already said I’d go, didn’t he?” Louis asks, dryly.

Harry chuckles. “Yeah, he did. He can come too, if that’ll make you come.”

 “Are you asking me because you feel like you should? Or because you actually want me to come?”

There’s a pause. “Like I said, Louis, you’re confusing. Why would I invite you if I don’t want to see you?” Harry responds slowly.

“Maybe you just couldn’t resist my luscious arse, and you actually have no use for my fantastic sense of humor?” Louis laughs, molding his voice into his breathy and charming flirting voice that worked so well on Harry at the restaurant.

Harry barks out a large laugh and then it gets cut off, like he clapped his hand over his mouth, and Louis grins quietly into his shoulder.

“I mean, the arse was a deciding factor,” Harry teases.

“I knew it! I knew you were only after me for my body!” Louis pulls the phone away from his ear and shrieks into it, prompting Zayn to stick his head out of the kitchen with one eyebrow raised and a questioning look on his face. Louis waves a hand at him, dismissing his confusion, and curls into a ball on the armchair. He shoves the phone back against his ear, almost as if he can soak up Harry through the speaker. He’s never felt so much like a teenaged girl.

“You caught me,” Harry jokes, a throaty chuckle following his words. “Seriously though, I do want to see you. I’d be upset if you came without your arse, but I’d like to see you? If you want to?” His voice trails off quietly, with that questioning tilt at the end that he always seems to employ when talking to Louis and god, Louis just wants to wrap himself in the sound of Harry’s voice, tinny and crackly as it is through the speaker.

“I’ll have to look at my appointment book,” Louis replies loftily. “I’m quite booked up, you see, but I’ll check if I can squeeze you in.”

“Yeah, you should check on that, might be difficult, could be a tight fit,” Harry laughs dirtily over the phone line and Louis can actually feel his cheeks turning red. Who is this boy?

“Hush, boy, I’ll have you know I’m a very busy man,” he chides Harry, with a giggle that he immediately hates himself for.

“Yeah, I’m sure you are, all those Oreos to eat and cigarettes to smoke. Your social life must be buzzing,” Harry is snickering and Louis feels like he can hear his smile from down the phone line and as hard as he tries not to, Louis finds himself grinning along with the idiot boy on the other end of the phone.

“You try my patience, Harold, I may not show up tonight if you continue,” Louis bites out teasingly and bangs his heels against the window sill. The sun suddenly looks so much brighter, for some reason, and Louis thinks he’d quite like to go find Zayn and waltz him all over the living room for answering that damn phone. His heart beats joyfully and his skin is buzzing with the ease of talking to Harry, the familiar way in which Harry jokes with him. It makes Louis feel as though he can trick himself into thinking that Harry is just another boy to flirt with, lets him forget about the poison on Harry’s hands.

He shakes the thought out of his mind, writes down the address Harry gives him, and promises to show up, with or without Zayn. And then with a click, Harry’s gone and Louis feels like singing and the colors seem brighter in the world and fuck, he’s seeing Harry tonight

Louis chucks his phone across the room, bolts up from his chair, and with shaky hands lights a cigarette and shoves it in his mouth, breathing deeply to calm himself.

“Zayn!” he shouts loudly.

Zayn sticks his head around the kitchen door. “What?”

“I need you.”

Zayn snorts and shakes his head. “No way, Lou. Your mess, you figure it out. I’m not helping you with shit.”

“Please, please, please?” Louis runs across the room and clasps his hands under his chin. “Zayn, darling, my sweet Zayn, there’ll be alcohol and pretty boys and you know how much you love that.”

Zayn glares at him. “Give me one good reason, besides alcohol and boys, why I should go with you to this party.”

Louis tilts his head. There are plenty of good reasons. In case Louis shows up and Harry’s true colors have shown through and he’s in the corner snogging some other boy, in case Louis’s self-confidence hits rock bottom and he needs Zayn to look good on his arm so people won’t pity him.

“What if I drink too much? You’ll have to drag me home! You wouldn’t want me to end up molested by some creepy guy in an alley, would you?” Louis pushes out his bottom lip and pouts at Zayn, who scrunches his eyebrows together and glares at Louis.

“Fine.” Zayn turns on his heel, back into the kitchen, and then wheels around, pointing a finger at Louis menacingly. “But you’re buying cigs for a week!” He turns around and stalks down the hall to his bedroom.

“It’s a deal!” Louis shouts down the hall. “Now come back, I need an outfit!”

 

***

The party is loud and in full-swing by the time Louis and Zayn show up. The townhouse at the address Harry gave Louis is tall and skinny, wedged between other just-as-posh looking townhouses in a very wealthy neighborhood that Louis feels dirty being in. Nice cars line the street and there are other beautifully dressed party-goers climbing out of taxis and shiny cars dropping them off.

Louis clutches Zayn’s arm tighter and leans over to whisper in his ear. “Zayn, honey, you might meet a millionaire tonight and never have to sell another painting.”

Zayn hits him with his hips and threads his arm through Louis’s. “Lou, you darling bastard, I’m already a billionaire, you’re the one who can barely afford notebooks.”

Well, if Louis can’t snag a millionaire with his charm, at least he’s got his looks. Zayn had cajoled him into wearing the white scoop neck tshirt that apparently attracts boys to Louis like bees to honey. Zayn had danced around the room, composing sonnets about Louis’s collarbones while Louis threw discarded and dirty laundry at him. It had been a stressful afternoon.

 Louis knows his jeans are tight enough, feels like he’s about to burst out of them at any minute. But Harry had told Louis to not forget his arse, so it was definitely on display for the evening.

When they get the top of the steps leading up to the door, it swings open, revealing a tall man with freckles and a floppy quiff. He’s dressed distinctly hipster-like and Louis has to resist the urge to roll his eyes at the man’s skinny black jeans and fancy shoes. Please, a hipster in New York is like a fish in the sea.

The man sticks out a pale white hand with long fingers and a thumb ring and Louis wants to laugh so badly, he almost chokes on it.

“Nicholas Grimshaw. You’re at my party. And who are you?” His quiff is so tall, it looks dangerously close to falling over and Louis is strangely curious to see what would happen if he pushed it over. It wobbles as the man nods his head at them.

“Louis, and this is Zayn.” Louis grasps his hand firmly. Nicholas cocks his head and raises an eyebrow. Louis is unsurprised to find that the man doesn’t recognize his name. Louis’s still wary of giving out his last name.

“Louis? Harry’s Louis” A voice floats out from behind Nicholas and a blonde boy pops out from behind him. His face is bright red, contrasting hilariously with his shock of blonde hair that looks like it’s been styled with fingers after rolling out of bed. He’s clutching a bottle of beer in both hands and bumps into the door frame as he leans around Nicholas to peer at the two boys on the door step.

“Uh yeah, I guess I am Harry’s Louis,” Louis laughs shortly. The blonde boy juggles his beer bottles, cradling them both in one arm and sticks out a hand for Louis to shake. He pumps it up and down and says,

“Niall, mate, Niall Horan. Glad to finally meet ya, Harry won’t shut up about ya!” His accent is thick and Irish, and he rolls his sounds brilliantly, rushed and flipped. He grins at Louis with a wide smile, glimmering white teeth and Louis is slightly blinded by his sparkling eyes and bright hair and smile. “You’re right fit, aren’t you? Harry wasn’t lying, was he, Grimmy?”

“Well if you’re a friend of Harry’s, then I’m being right rude, aren’t I” Nicholas steps back from the door and sweeps his arm, indicating that Louis and Zayn should come in. “Would hate to leave someone as pretty as you out in the cold, that’d be a shame, no?”

Louis’s not really sure if Nicolas is mocking him or not, but he chooses to ignore him and instead turns back to Niall, who’s now enthusiastically yanking Zayn’s hand up and down and pushing one of his beers into Zayn’s hand.

“Mate, you’re fuckin’ Zayn Malik, I’ve seen your stuff! Bloody good shit you’ve got going on there,” Niall exclaims, still gripping Zayn’s hand tightly in his. Zayn looks a little confused and scared and inwardly Louis laughs at him, blessing Niall for putting Zayn out of his place so quickly.

“So, new toy of Harry’s?” Nicholas’s voice sounds in his ear, and Louis can feel spidery fingers on his elbow. He turns around, guard up.

“Nope. Just a friend,” he says carefully, regarding the territorial look in Nicholas’ eyes. Nicholas snorts and releases go of his elbow, stepping back away from Louis. Thank god, because he’s much taller than Louis and Louis fucking hates looking up to people.

“Well, darling, I hate to disappoint, but Harry doesn’t really have many friends,” Nicholas says, with narrowed eyes and a biting, high laugh. He twirls the stem of his wine glass in his long fingers and Louis itches to knock it out of his hand, and tell him just how Harry came to have a giant purple bruise on his throat, explain the exact way that Harry looked when he was under Louis’s hands and begging for it.

“Guess you don’t know him like you thought you did then, Nicholas,” Louis snaps cuttingly.

Nicholas laughs and flicks him on the shoulder. “Oh, babe, call me Nick or Grimmy. Preferably Grimmy, Nick makes me feel juvenile. Call me Grimmy.” His laugh is a sharp cackle and Louis wants to punch him in his perfect pale throat.

“No, I shan’t.” Louis turns and stalks away Nick, wading through the crowd of people drinking their expensive alcohol and wearing their expensive clothes. Good lord, who is Harry friends with? Louis feels out of place in his clearly non-designer clothes. There’s an elegant wrought-iron staircase leading to a second floor, with lavish decorations up the wall and Louis wonders what Nick does for a living.

In the kitchen there’s an entire counter full of bottles of alcohol and while Louis considers himself quite the expert in alcohol, he’s bewildered by the sheer amount of it and decides that he’ll try and find Zayn before delving into the complicated mess he seems to have found himself in.

“Need a drink?” A voice says behind Louis and for the second time that night, he whirls around with his guard up. A tall man with a bunch of messy brown hair is smiling down at him from a towering height. There’s a lot of tall men at this party, Louis realizes. He’s got a nice face, open and smiling, and is very much not dressed in hipster apparel, which makes Louis warm up to him much quicker. In fact, he looks almost as out of place as Louis, as if he hadn’t realized this was a fucking black tie event.

Louis smiles charmingly at him, bearing that smile with the fangs, and looks up sweetly at the man. “I’d love one, thanks.”

The man reaches around him and draws a cup of punch, which he then hands to Louis.

“I’d start with the punch, if I were you. Least spiked drink in this house. Grimshaw likes his alcohol,” the man chuckles.

“Thank you…” Louis trails off, prompting the man for his name.

He blushes and winces, sticking his hand out. “Sorry, I’m a rude idiot. Greg James, at your service,” he grins at Louis. “And you are?”

“Louis, pleased to make your acquaintance,” Louis snorts, and does a little curtsy. Well, if things don’t work out with Harry, here’s a tall, non-thumb-ring-wearing man with a nice smile.

“Nice to meet you, Louis,” Greg smiles widely at him and takes a sip of his own drink. “Friend of Grimshaw’s?”

Louis almost chokes on his drink on his rush to correct Greg, coming close to laughing punch up his nose. “Fuck no, just met him tonight. Can’t say I’m a fan, actually.”

“Yeah, he can be like that. What’d he do, call you darling, ask you to call him Grimmy, and insult you within the first 5 minutes?”

Louis laughs. “All of the above.”

“He’s an infuriating bastard ‘till you get to know him, trust me,” Greg says jovially and pats Louis on the shoulder. His hand is huge and Louis’s stomach tingles a bit at his touch, and he has to remind himself that he’s here to find Harry, not flirt with pretty boys with nice smiles and a good sense of humor.

“So Louis, who do you know here then?”

“Uh, Harry Styles, actually. Have you seen him around?” Louis asks inquisitively, peering over Greg’s tall shoulder to see if he can spot the curly head wandering around. He secretly hopes that Harry hasn’t been enjoying himself before Louis got here and that he’ll suddenly show up and his eyes will light up and he’ll whisk Louis away to a bedroom, and Louis is getting ahead of himself.

Right then, Niall appears at Louis’s elbow, another full bottle of beer grasped tightly in his hand. He bumps into Louis and roars in approval, blearily looking at Greg, probably trying to recognize him and then seems to give up and sticks his face right in Louis’s face.

“Mate, aren’t ya supposed to be stickin’ your tongue down Harry’s throat right about now?” Niall shouts in his face and out of the corner of his eye, Louis can see Greg’s face fall. Oops.

“Yeah, about that, Niall, where is he?” Louis grabs Niall’s arm to keep him from tipping over.

“I dunno, last I saw him he was talkin’ to some model upstairs on the balcony,” Niall squints at Louis and waves his arm in the general direction of the staircase. A model. Fuck. That streak in Louis’s blood that rears its ugly head when he gets all possessive is hungrily sniffing out for somebody to be pissed at and a model preening all over Harry is just the kind of person to take out his anger on. Louis nods shortly and goes to make his way through the crowd when Niall grabs his shoulder and hauls him back.

Niall leans in close and with alcohol-soaked breath, breathes all over Louis’s face. “Lou, Lou my mate, ya like Harry, yeah?”

Louis nods. More or less. In a way. So-so. Maybe. Perhaps. He goes to pull his way out of Niall’s grasp, but his hands are surprisingly strong for someone with that much alcohol in him.

“Ya gotta listen to me, alright, here’s the thing,” Niall says, pulling Louis in even closer until their heads are bent together. “Here’s the thing, Louis, Harry’s a bit, y’know?” Niall nods sadly at Louis as if he’s said something profound.

“Sorry, he’s a bit what?” Louis shakes his head and looks around. Greg is gone, melted back into the crowd, and Louis feels a pang of regret.

“He’s a bit, y’know, breakable?” Niall waves his hands around, trying to get Louis to fathom the extent of what he’s saying. “Y’know, like he’s had people fuck him up and he’s a bit messy.”

“A bit messy?” Louis blinks at him. Louis knows messy, Louis is the definition of messy in the dictionary.

“Yeah, bit messy upstairs,” Niall taps the side of his head with one finger and his eyes are sad, blue tinged through with pain and Louis wonders what Niall has gone through with Harry and just how close they are. He thinks of the shadows in Harry’s green eyes and the way he played piano that one night at the club when Louis had seen him play for the first time, when he witnessed the arrogance and the talent and oh god, the light, all the filthy light that Louis wanted for himself.

Niall pats Louis’s arm tenderly and nods sadly at him, as if they’ve shared a great moment. Louis almost feels like they actually have. He wants to grab Niall’s arm and thank him or something. He doesn’t know what for, Niall has only alerted him to the fact that Harry’s messy, which is no less than what Louis was expecting, given everything Louis had witnessed.

“Just be careful, mate, yeah?” Niall swings his head around at him and gazes at him steadily with blue eyes before ambling off, bumping into people left and right.

And now to find Harry. Louis sets off through the crowd, weaving around women in glittery dresses until he reaches the bottom of the staircase, and then he makes his way up, avoiding over-filled flutes of champagne balancing delicately in their owner’s hands. The second floor is just as full of people and Louis wonders again what it is that Nick does that he has so many friends, and such a beautiful home. Fucker.

He doesn’t see Harry on this floor, though, as he pushes his way through the crowd, in search of the balcony Niall had mentioned.

Right as he turns around to head back the other way, he bumps into a very solid shoulder and then sees a tall black quiff, and oh there’s Zayn. With somebody. A familiar somebody, with thick shoulders and shorn hair and puppy brown eyes. Louis definitely knows this boy. Definitely.

“Lou, wondered where’d you got off to,” Zayn grins widely and maniacally at Louis and winds an arm around his waist, pulling him close and against his body. Louis can feel all the warmth emanating from him, can feel the lines of his ribs up close against his. It’s pretty easy, that. Could walk out of here now, not deal with someone “messy upstairs”. Could go home with Zayn, watch The Inbetweeners and fall into bed with gel-encrusted hair. Louis sags into Zayn’s side.

“Lou, this is Liam,” Zayn gestures towards the boy standing near them. That’s when Louis remembers where he knows the guy from. Liam, from the bar, who helped him with Harry on Christmas Eve. Christ, what a small world. He holds out his hand for Liam. So much hand-shaking tonight, Louis feels like his hands are going to fall off.

“Hey, bartender Liam, nice to see you again,” Louis says wearily and leans further into Zayn’s embrace. He feels Zayn’s fingers tapping nervously against his hipbone and wonders what Zayn is nervous about, and then he sees the way Zayn’s eyes are flashing over to Liam, repeatedly, and the way his lips curl in a wide smile every time Liam looks his way. Oh.

Louis pushes himself off Zayn and stands up as tall as his short stature will let him. He straightens his shirt. Flicks his hair to the side and re-appraises Liam, who looks so straight it almost hurts. Poor Zayn.

“So, Liam, how do you know Nicholas Grimshaw, twat of the century?” Louis asks bitterly, taking a deep gulp of his punch and relishing the burn of the alcohol down his throat, coating his vocal chords in a raspy haze.

“Uh, I don’t actually, I know Niall Horan?” Liam says, carefully. His hands are large, with neatly cut fingernails. His trousers are ironed. Louis hates him. “Little blonde bloke running around. Know him through the industry.”

Louis nods and hums absently, looking around for Harry’s shock of curly hair. How many balconies could there be in this goddamn palace?

“Well, nice to see you again, Liam. Zayn, I’m off to find my prince,” Louis says. There’s no reaction as Zayn continues to stare at Liam with an almost idolizing look in his eyes. Louis wants to kick him in the ankle. But he doesn’t. He settles for fixing Liam with a steady glare before he walks away, back towards the staircase, where he then sees another stupid fucking wrought-iron staircase.

There aren’t as many people on the third floor. Seems to be mostly doors along a long hallway. Some doors have noises behind them, noises that Louis is quite sure that he doesn’t want to walk in. The walls of the hall are lined with framed photos of models on runways, dressed in elaborate and ridiculous outfits. There must be dozens of the pictures, and then Louis realizes that Nicholas Grimshaw is the Nicholas Grimshaw of Grim, the fashion line. He’s a fucking fashion designer, what a prick. Louis despises him.

Past the few people lining the hallway is a glass door leading out to a balcony, and beyond that the lights of Manhattan glitter against the dark sky. The skyscrapers are tall against the inky blackness, some dots of light in windows illuminated in the darkness.

Louis pushes open the glass door and the cold night air hits him in the face with a blast. There’s a biting wind and small piercing snowflakes strike his face and sting.

And there, there over in the corner is Harry. He stands like somebody who knows he’s got the world in his palm and doesn’t actually want it. His back is hunched a little bit, feet pointed in funny directions, and he gazes out ponderingly at the night sky. There’s empty glasses littered on the table behind him. A lit cigarette smolders in his fingers, seemingly forgotten. He’s wearing a dark blazer over dark shirt and Louis’s stomach twists in knots at the sight of him. God, he’d forgotten, in the haze of lust over the individual parts of Harry, his red cherry lips and the shadowed eyes with the veins of gold that Louis wanted to lose himself in, he’d forgotten the tall stature of Harry and the way he carried himself, and his altogether loveliness. Goddamn angel.

“Harry,” he says softly, and closes the glass door behind him with a small snap. Harry’s head whips around at Louis and his mouth curls lazily and almost menacingly into a wide smile, loose with alcohol.

“Well, look who decided to show up,” Harry laughs coldly.

“I’ve been here for a while, got held up,” Louis snaps, not at all pleased to be talked to like a fucking fourteen year old. Harry could’ve come looking for him, if he wanted him to be here that badly. Instead he chose to stand out here in the bloody cold like some madman and drink himself into a stupor. As Louis draws closer, he sees that telltale flush in Harry’s usually pale cheeks, and his sharp green eyes are dull and unfocused. It would seem that alcohol got to Harry before Louis could.

Louis’s never really thought about the amount of alcohol he consumed. Too much for his liver, most likely. But he wouldn’t call himself an alcoholic. But Harry. Harry can barely be eighteen and the empty drinks behind him tell a story of an old man with regrets as deep as the wine bottles he drowns himself in. Louis’s seen the men stumbling along the streets at 5 in the morning, when Louis himself is making his way home from a party or the club. His drunkenness is a loud and gamboling party, but there are men whose addictions drown them in their sorrows and blanket them in a fear of no tomorrow. Louis fears that Harry, with his glassy eyes and his slack mouth, is fast on his way to becoming a man who lives inside the feel of alcohol roaring through his veins. If there was ever a real reason for Louis to run from this boy with the glass heart, this would be it. An alcoholic is not something Louis has the heart to deal with.

“Fate’s a funny thing, Lou, isn’t it?” Harry swings his hand up to his mouth and closes his scarlet mouth around the end of the cigarette. He sucks in a breath and then blows a narrow stream of smoke into the frosty air. “Fucks with people, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe,” Louis allows.

“Makes us do crazy things. Believing in fate, I mean.”

“Yeah, I guess it does. If you believe in fate.”

“And you don’t, correct?” Harry waves his cigarette towards Louis, the glowing tip of it arcing through the air and cutting it with its brightness.

“Harry, what is this?”

“Do you fucking believe in fate or not?” Harry snaps and looks straight at Louis, his eyes piercing Louis, and Louis’s struck with that familiar feeling of wanting to look down and check for a hole in his chest, because Harry’s eyes burn with an intensity that Louis only saw when Harry was attacking the piano with such a frenzied voracity.

“For instance,” Harry says. “What would happen if I jumped right now?” Before Louis can even take one step toward Harry, he’s got his feet on the topmost rung of the railing of the balcony. The roar of the cars in the streets below suddenly seems much louder and Louis’s heart is beating like a drum in his chest, adrenaline rushing through him, and his pulse is banging in his ears and holy fucking shit, Harry’s up on that railing and he’s gonna jump and Louis’s gonna watch him land on the pavement and he’s gonna watch that glass heart shatter, and all Louis can think is that he wants Harry to be next to him, so he can take his hand and not let go. Fuck

 Harry’s feet are much too large for the skinny rung he’s balancing on. He’s got one hand pushing his hair off his face and one holding the cigarette in his mouth before he waves it around and shakily turns around towards Louis.

“Harry, get down from there,” Louis warns and takes a step closer.

“Oh no, Louis, don’t come any closer. Look how easy it’d be,” Harry laughs charmingly, like a child, bubbly and sparkly, and puts his foot on the top railing so his knee is bent. He throws his cigarette into the street below, three stories down, and Louis’s heart falls through his stomach as he watches the bright red tip float in the air and land on the dark street, so far below them.

“So, Louis, fate?” Harry turns and looks at him and his eyes are so dark, so green, heavy with the feel of the alcohol rushing around in his veins. “Does it exist?”

Louis eyes Harry’s feet on the rungs. He’s terrified to take a step forward, in case Harry heaves himself over the railing, an action he seems capable of doing any moment now.

“I don’t know, Harry, I don’t know, but don’t do this,” Louis says carefully and desperately.

“So if I jump now, am I going to miraculously survive, because in some world we’re meant to be together?” Harry laughs in that childlike way again, his mouth stretched in such a wide grin that Louis has to look away before the image becomes branded in his mind.  What has he gotten himself into? Messy? Harry is not messy, Harry is downright fucking insane. His eyes glow and Louis is fucking terrified.

“Or will I decide not to jump?” Harry stops laughing and stares at Louis, stares right through him and it feels like he’s gazing at the tiny indentations that, over the course of the last few weeks, he’s made on Louis’s heart. Louis’s heart, stitched together with broken promises and shattered bottles of alcohol and the careful threading and sewing of Zayn’s fingers, is thumping wildly, up in his throat as he takes in the way Harry’s giant foot slips on the icy rungs of the balcony. His fingers itch, he wants to reach out and grab Harry by the back of the coat.

“Louis,” Harry calls softly.

“Harry.”

“Give me a really great reason why I shouldn’t jump,” Harry says calmly and coldly, all traces of childishness gone from his face. He moves his other foot up to the railing until he’s balancing only on a three inch piece of metal. His hand grasps the wall of the house, his head barely brushing the ceiling of the townhouse above them. Louis makes an aborted movement forward. Fuck.

“Because this is life,” Louis tries, desperation slamming through his heart. “This is it, Harry, this is what we’re meant to do, to  _live_. Harry, death would be the end of all that.”

“Oh believe me, Louis, death would be a welcome relief.” Harry smiles and it’s the scariest thing Louis has ever seen, Harry’s pink lips stretched in a death grin.

“Why?” Louis asks, stalling for time. He prays that someone will come out on the balcony, Nicholas, Greg, Zayn, anybody to get Harry off the railing.

“I have felt the depths of the world, I have been to the inner circle of hell and back,” Harry intones, and his words sound elegant and empty, chillingly prophetic. It’s as if he’s reciting a poem, eyes wide open, curls whipping around in the wind. “I have been chained to my own mind, and my chains can only be broken by death. I relish death, Louis, I welcome it. Do you?”

“No, Harry, of course not. I’m young! You’re young! Please, get off the railing and let’s talk about this,” Louis pleads, moving a step closer. But Harry flings one hand up, wobbling a bit on the railing, and Louis steps no closer.

“I am not afraid of death, Louis,” Harry solemnly states. “Only in death are we free.”

Louis shakes his head. “I can’t believe that, Harry. I don’t believe that. I am unhappy with my life, but I do live it. I would rather live my life and find out if I can do something worthwhile than throw it all away.”

“Louis, I am on this railing for one reason, and one reason only.” Harry smiles that terrifying smile again and Louis’s bones are chilled from the insides out. “Do you know what that reason is?”

“No.”

“Because I can. I’m fighting fate, Louis, don’t you see?”

“No, I don’t see, Harry. You’re scaring me.”

Harry laughs wildly, the sound of it echoing off the tin siding of the house and roiling out into the dark air. It must be almost midnight, the roars of crowds in the streets of New York are getting louder and he can make out small bursts of fireworks in different parts of the city.

“Fate, the lovely lady fate, has spoken to me and said that we would meet here tonight. And here we are.”

“Yes, Harry, here we are. I’m here. I wanted to see you; I came here to see you. Don’t you remember our phone conversation this afternoon?” That sunny moment when Harry had teased Louis, when the world seemed that much brighter for a few moments, it seems so far away, light years away from the Harry that stands on the railing with the wind whipping his hair and that manic smiling ripping a slash in his face.

“I do.”

“Fate, Harry, that’s why we’re here. You said so yourself,” Louis begs with Harry. So fate. Maybe it exists. Is it fate that Louis stopped and talked to Greg, is it fate that he bumped into Niall? Bumped into Liam? Is there a reason that Louis couldn’t get up to this balcony faster, to keep Harry from drinking those last damning drinks? Louis almost feels as if he’s reaching for something, something just out of his grasp and his every being depends on finding on what he’s missing.

“So Louis, do you believe in fate? Meant to be? Forever after?” Harry’s foot slips a little bit and he catches himself on the side of the townhouse, but Louis knows his answer.

“I do, Harry, I do believe in fate.” And he believes it too. Perhaps the glass of Harry’s heart is so cracked with a spidery web of fractures that only titanium will bolster it, maybe the man looking down on the circle of golden snow in which they stood that night, maybe that man who saw the repeated image of lovers destroyed, saw an image of lovers who gave up on fate. So maybe, Harry Styles, with his eyes like stars, made Louis believe in fate.

Harry grins and it’s that grin that lights him up and gives him the dimple. He laughs freely, raucously, unrestrained. He doesn’t clap his hand over his mouth. The notes of his laugh drift off into the night and a giant roar rises up from Times Square.

It’s midnight, fireworks go off in the distance, and Harry jumps off the railing, strides over to Louis, takes his face in hands that are all at once delicate and rough, and presses his lips firmly against Louis’s.

Louis’s head swims, his hands find the hot skin of Harry’s back and he doesn’t think of fate, he doesn’t think of Harry’s foot slipping on the railing, all he knows is the sweet pressure of Harry’s lips against his, the way Harry’s hands grasp under his thighs and lift him up. He locks his legs around Harry’s waist and they stumble against the table with the glasses on it; they clatter to the ground with a smash that neither of them heeds, and Harry shoves them up against the wall.

 _Harry, Harry, Harry_ , Louis’s blood sings in joy, and he grabs fistfuls of Harry’s shirt and bruises Harry’s lips with his own.

Harry pulls back and rests his forehead against Louis’s, breathing heavily and deeply, a rush of alcohol-soaked breath that washes over Louis’s face. He nudges his forehead softly against Louis’s and Louis nudges back.

Harry leans in and kisses Louis’s cheek softly and says,

“We’ve got fate on our side this time.”

“We do.”

“Are you going to run away?

“No.”

Harry smiles at him, soft and sure, and takes his hand.

“Well, let’s do this then.”


	9. Chapter 8

The human heart beats at 72 beats per minute.

Harry Styles has a heart made of glass, heated at a supernova temperature and made from the energy of the stars scattered in the galaxies that swim in his eyes.  His bones are imprinted with the notes of a cedar song and his skin is composed of the bark of an oak tree, worn with eternal fingertips and brushed with a gloss that seals the cracks in his damaged skeleton.

The human heart is an altar of worship, with arteries and veins bowing their heads in cellular prayer. There are four chambers in the heart, two atriums and two ventricles, and the scarlet blood flows in rivers from each hallowed hall to the next, in a journey that rivals that of the traveler of empty skies and barren deserts, ancient wanderers who seek the truth.

It is said that titanium is corrosion-resistant. Inherently this is false, because nicotine-stained fingers and eyes like winged comets are as eroding as eternal oceans against rocky cliffs, and titanium cannot withstand the force of strokes of a paintbrush over the crevices in one’s soul. Louis Tomlinson has a heart of rusted titanium, fissures forged by the paintbrush of a boy with a universe in his amber eyes and love in his mouth, a mouth that eternally tastes like comfortable smoke and cerulean paint.

The canyons in Louis Tomlinson’s heart will be broken open by a star-crossed wanderer with a scarlet mouth and agony ingrained in the pads of his fingertips. The wanderer’s eyes are made of Atlantic sea-foam and destroyed galaxies, his skin dusted with the sands of the undertow, and his glass heart beats in time with a metronome and he breathes in ebony and ivory gusts. The valleys of Louis Tomlinson’s ventricular atriums and cardiovascular muscle will be destroyed by a galactic god and sewn together with the blown heat of glass.

Zayn Malik lives in each of the 72 beats of Louis Tomlinson’s heart, but Harry Styles and his asteroid bones will destroy and then recreate the chambers of Louis’s heart, and titanium will turn to dust.

Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

It is 8:32 AM and the sun breaks on the windowsill.

**

“We should go to breakfast.”

Louis’s brain is sluggish and sleep-heavy as he turns his head to look at Harry, who lies on his stomach like a fallen angel, sheets pulled up to his neck. His head is burrowed sideways in the pillow, curls fanning out in a halo. His lips are bitten-red, eyes darkly green with sleep, and Louis wants to lick the strip of skin showing between his hairline and the edge of the sheet.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I owe you, remember?” Harry grins slowly and wolfishly, the edges of his cherry lips tucked into the corners of his mouth. He presses his cold toes into the sharp bone of Louis’s shin.

Louis hums, the sound of it buzzing in the twelve inches of space that separates their faces. He reaches out a thumb and runs it along the crimson velvet of Harry’s lower lip, pushed out in the pout of a petulant child. Harry’s pink tongue pokes out and he draws Louis’s thumb into his mouth, runs his tongue down the pad of Louis’s thumb and playfully bites, gossamer eyes trained on Louis’s eyes trained on the plush of Harry’s rose mouth.

“Alright,” Louis whispers. He looks back up at Harry, who’s watching him, metallic green drowning green, and smiles into the corner of his pillow.

“Yeah?”

Louis nods. “Wanna suck you off though.”

Harry laughs, bright like the sun that peeks around the curtains of the window beside the bed. He’s blinding, smile taking up half his face and eyes like half-moons, and it’s too early, way too early, and they’re in this too-soft bed on the third floor of Nicholas fucking Grimshaw’s tall house, but the strings of Louis’s heart tangle in a knot as he takes in the sharp line of Harry’s jaw, pale like dried bone, and the luxurious tilt of the tendons in his neck as he throws his head back. He thinks back to just a few hours ago, when Harry had sighed in lavender blooms into Louis’s neck as he moved over him, when his hands had made bruises on Louis’s hips the exact shape of his carpal bones, and Louis had fucked into him with a ferocity borne from a fire that tasted like the sweat gathered in the craters of Harry’s hips. The night was dark, inky blackness lit only with the stars in Harry’s eyes, and Louis couldn’t even make out the outline of Harry’s lanky body, and he felt with his eyes and his hands and his mouth and his cock until the boy underneath him was panting with want, eyes the color of midnight sin.

And now the room is bright, lit up with fading dawn, and normally it is at this time that Louis crawls into a bed that smells like smoke and turpentine, but instead he’s here. He counts it a miracle that he hasn’t run away as the first fingers of the morning light stroked the face of the boy in the bed next to him.

Louis has always been of the opinion that morning is more dangerous than night. The morning exposes the gaunt desperation that nighttime produced and rips the shadowed security into tatters. It is for this reason that Louis rarely stays in bed with a boy he has just fucked or been fucked by, because rising dawn means rising disappointment and rejection, and Louis likes to hit the ground running before the first slivers of sunrise.

And yet here he is, inches away from a boy composed of the heat of a thousand suns, with a laugh that reminds Louis of cherry ice-lollies and childlike hope. And Louis’s feet are not running away, but are instead hooked on Harry’s delicate ankles. Louis questions his sanity but not his choices. He questions Harry’s choices, and not his sanity, because Louis suspects the truth about Harry’s sanity is not one to be played with like a cat and a ball of string. There are things in this world better left alone, and the dark recesses of Harry’s mind that were showcased on the balcony last night are at the top of the list of things that Louis hesitates to touch.

Instead, he raises his fingers to the dips and hollows of Harry’s throat and feels the vibrations resonate through the skin. Harry flops on his back, quirks a challenging eyebrow to Louis, and pats his thighs in an invitation. Louis rolls his eyes.

He leans over Harry, licks into his mouth and tastes the sleepy staleness of alcohol that resides behind Harry’s teeth and on the pad of his tongue. Harry pushes the sheet off his chest as Louis’s tongue explores the dips and hollows of Harry’s mouth and when Louis finally lifts his lips from Harry’s, he looks down Harry’s naked body and is met with a sight he hadn’t anticipated. The milky white of Harry’s chest and hips is littered with tattoos, inscriptions and words that Louis hadn’t noticed in the smothering blackness the night before. He thinks, with a rueful smile, that his mind was otherwise occupied.

“What?”

Louis tears his eyes away from the meaningless-to-him words that scatter Harry’s skin and meets Harry’s eyes. “Nothing, just hadn’t noticed all this,” he waves his hand down Harry’s body, “last night.”

“Really?” Harry laughs, somewhat bitterly, and Louis watches as some of the tattoos undulate as the muscles in Harry’s stomach ripple.

“What do they mean?” Louis traces a fingernail along the inky smear of a tattoo that sits in the hollows of Harry’s collarbone, and he wonders how on earth he could have missed the tiny and lilting script. “You are more than what you create,” he reads out loud.

Harry shifts uncomfortably under him. Louis looks up at him and Harry’s face is closed off, no longer smiling, and his hand scratches restlessly at another line of script on his hip bone. Louis can’t read it upside down.

“Uh, it’s for-”, Harry starts and then stops. “They’re like…” he trails off, breath hitching as Louis curls his fingers around the base of his cock. He sucks in his breath sharply as Louis slides his hand up his thickening cock, just barely touching. “They’re things to remember,” Harry lets out in a giant whoosh of breath as Louis leans down and laps at the head of his cock.

“Tell me one day,” Louis says quietly, Harry’s cock bumping lightly against his cheek and smearing precome onto the sharp of his cheekbone.

Harry nods shakily, and for the next twenty minutes, Louis’s mouth is otherwise occupied.

**

Zayn hasn’t answered any of Louis’s texts. He sends questioning text after questioning text as Harry gathers his clothes from around the room and slips into them. Louis watches as his tattoos are covered. There are some in the hollows of his hips, the insides of his thighs, the side of his knees, an entire line of script that runs down the length his spine, and many more. So many words, none of which make any sense to Louis, and surprisingly he’s okay with that. Everyone has their secrets. Who is Louis to demand Harry’s secrets from his clenched fist?

“He’s still not answering?” Harry asks as his head pops out from the collar of his shirt. His curls are wild, springing from his head in disarray.

Louis shakes his head. The flightiness of Zayn’s soul incites the same worry in Louis that he thinks his own dangerous apathy probably instills in Zayn. But what are they, if not the gatekeepers of each other’s bruised souls?

Harry runs a thumb from Louis’s ear to his mouth and tilts his head up with hesitant fingers. “He’ll be fine. Either he’s here somewhere and asleep, or at home and asleep. ”

There are people sleeping all over the main floor of the house, in various states of undress. A few people are picking their way around the living room, gathering clothes and purses, and the door opens and closes quietly, the only noise in the house. It’s early for a bunch of hipsters, Louis thinks. Zayn is nowhere in sight.

In the kitchen, they find Niall asleep on the tile floor, his pants nowhere to be seen and his head pillowed on a large pile of Rice Krispies that crackle every time he moves his head and snores loudly. Nick himself stands by the coffeepot, clad in only a striped pair of boxers and a thin white tshirt. His head is resting in his hands, eyes closed while the coffeepot gurgles. Louis hopes Nick has a raging hangover.

“Nick, we’re heading out,” Harry says quietly, so as not to disturb the sleeping Niall. Nick jumps, his head cracking against the low edge of the cupboard and he winces. Louis snorts loudly. Serves the bastard right.

Nick carefully looks between Harry and Louis, and Louis knows he’s taking in Louis’s swollen and red mouth, and the glossy, satisfied look in Harry’s eyes. Louis hopes Nick can tell exactly what happened. As he watches, Nick’s eyes narrow and he stands taller, back straightening in an attempt to be taller than Louis, and Louis scoffs inwardly.

“Good night?” Nick asks smoothly, his sharp eyes calculatingly fixed upon Louis’s obvious sex hair.

Louis’s mouth curls into an answering smirk.  

“Yeah?” Nick breathes, walking closer, panther-like and slinking, his eyes flashing between Harry and Louis. Harry’s not even paying attention, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the pot that Nick abandoned. Nick leans in close to Louis, his mouth right by Louis’s ear. “Tread lightly, Louis.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Louis asks loudly, and Harry looks up sharply at the tone of Louis’s voice. He looks back and forth between Nick and Louis, his eyebrows furrowed like an angry kitten.

Nick shrugs. “Means what it means.” His smile is thin and dangerous, and Louis can see every red-hot warning that Nick means for him to see, loud and clear, tucked into the edges of that sharp smile. 

“Listen here, Grimshaw,” Louis starts, his voice scathing, but before he gets any further Niall snorts loudly in his sleep, and then Harry is between Louis and Nick, one hand tight around the bones of Louis’s wrist.

“C’mon, Louis, let’s go,” he tugs Louis’s wrist. Nick raises his eyebrows sharply at Louis, daring him to continue, but he doesn’t, he lets Harry lead him from the kitchen. At the door, Harry turns back.

“Bye, Nick,” he says softly and Louis wonders what Nick is, was, for Harry. Surely not an ex-boyfriend, Louis hates to think that Harry would ever be with such a blatant asshole.

“See you, Haz. Don’t be a stranger,” Nick replies, still looking at Louis, his mouth twisted in a grimace like he’s just tasted poison. Louis fucking hates him.

**

Louis springs the question when they have waffles in front of them, and Harry’s face has relaxed into a loose smile. He sips his chocolate milk and grins childishly at Louis before digging into his waffles, smearing chocolate sauce at the corners of his mouth. As Louis watches, his tongue pokes out to lick at the edges of his lips, and Louis flushes slightly, hot all of a sudden. Harry smirks at him like he knows what he’s doing to Louis, and dramatically and seductively draws his tongue along the edges of his lips, eyes dancing in green and gold sparks, soft with sleep and laughter.

“So what’s the deal with Grimshaw?” Louis asks, and the smile slides right off Harry’s face. He regrets asking it almost immediately, as the corners of Harry’s mouth turn down and his face closes off, sharp and unresponsive. But Louis doesn’t take it back, because last night he promised Harry he wouldn’t run away, and if Louis is going to link his rusted chains with Harry’s diamond ones, then he wants to know what each piece means.

“Did you go out with him?” He pushes, leaning forward slightly and trying to capture Harry’s eyes. Harry nods slightly, his eyes still downcast and trained on the waffle in front of him. His curls hang over his face and Louis resists the urge to reach across the table and brush his hair off his forehead. To do so would be much too intimate for a waffle shop. Perhaps too intimate for Louis himself, whose veins strum with the aching distance between him and all things beautiful.

Louis hums and stabs viciously at his waffle. He tries to imagine lanky and childlike Harry with slinking Nick and his yellow eyes, far too knowing for Louis’s taste, and the image jars him, the sharp edges of Nick’s threatening smiles slicing through the wine-red smear of Harry’s mouth. Louis thinks that his own bones, while riddled through with lies and sin, form a perfect cosmic skeleton with Harry’s asteroid bones and the gardens sprouting in his ribcage, femur against femur, scapula against scapula, and the weight of their marrows holding them down in the undertow. The long fingered bones of Harry’s hands, wide and aching with joints bent by long days at a wooden bench, fit perfectly with the bones of Louis’s. He refuses to relinquish his already-fragile hold on Harry to a man with a mouth like mangled metal and hands like spiders.

“So what happened then?” He needs to know, it is crucial that he understand.

“We didn’t work out.” Harry’s voice is indigo, but he gives nothing away, and Louis thinks how sad it is the mottled green and gold cloudbursts in Harry’s melancholy eyes say more than the forced lies that drip from his tongue like poisoned honey.

“Too pretentious for you?” Louis snorts. Rich bastards with too much money in their fingers and not enough love in their hearts. Not that Louis knows anything about love in his heart, because he’s got Harry’s big pretty face in front of him and he still wants nothing more than to take him apart and sew his lines with string crafted by Louis’s own nimble fingers, and is that love? To want to know that out there, in the world, alive and breathing, is somebody whose blood runs with Louis’s light? To know that Harry is made from Louis, that there is no Harry without a Louis?

Body of Christ, broken for you. Take, eat, and when you do, do so in love for me.

Not really. Louis thinks its selfishness, and that’s a feeling he knows so well. Louis still doesn’t know the color of love; he’s well aware that it’s not love he feels for Harry, but a need, a burning desperation to make Harry his own, to infuse Harry with his blood, his bone. There is nothing Louis wants more than to exist outside of his own wasted body, to live in the blood of another.

Harry Styles is a vessel of the cosmos, empty of his soul. Louis Tomlinson lives in a desecrated body, ruined by people and drugs and himself, and he yearns to free himself of it. Louis likens himself to a genie in a lamp; his body is his prison, and Harry is all at once his bread and water, and his poison.

Blood of Christ, shed for you. Take, drink, and when you do, do so in love for me.

Harry sits in front of him, his cheeks high with flush, and his Andromeda eyes are the universe, large and unblinking, owlish in their intensity.

“Nick is not pretentious,” Harry says firmly. “He’s too big for this world, and he thrives on being alone.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means what it means.” Harry’s eyes are big and wide, eyelashes tangled at the corners, and Louis thinks he sees the depths of Harry’s agony, and he wonders what it means that Harry just said the exact same thing that Nick did when he told Louis to tread lightly.

There is pause, during which Harry folds his big hands in a church steeple on the dirty and sticky table in front of him, waffles pushed to the side.

“What did he do to you?” Louis asks quietly.

Harry’s head shoots up. “Nothing, he didn’t do anything to me, I was-”, he cuts himself off and shakes his head slightly. “Nothing, he did nothing.”

“Well he obviously did something, or you two would still be together.”

“There’s nothing to talk about, Louis. Drop it.” Harry curls into himself on the cracked vinyl of the red booth, limbs folding around himself until his size is reduced by half, and Louis wonders if this is the consequence of being with Nicholas Grimshaw, that Harry has learned to fit into spaces too small for his body, his gravity compressing in on itself.

“Well, I just think-”, Louis starts, but Harry cuts him off, his voice biting and sharp like the jagged ends of a splinter.

“What about your boy, Louis?” Harry snaps at him, his eyes sparking comets, and his cherry mouth set in a hard line. As soon as he says it, his eyes retreat back into his head like he wants to take back the sentence, pluck it out of thin air and put it back inside himself, but it hangs there in the space between them, Louis with his mouth wide open and Harry’s eyes charged with defiance.

“Zayn?” Louis’s mind is blank.

“Yes, Zayn,” Harry snaps, and Zayn’s name sounds like it doesn’t fit in Harry’s mouth, the edges too sharp for the easily-broken skin at the corner of Harry’s mouth, like his lips have to stretch in a ghoulish grimace to fit around the sounds of Zayn’s name. “You can’t even be without him for one night.”

Louis feels his own barbed wire rust in that minute, and fall dusty onto the ground and he sits back in his booth, crossing his arms in front of his chest and meeting Harry’s angry green eyes with his own. He stays silent, and they watch each other, Louis with his eyes narrowed like a lynx and Harry with his eyes wide like a deer.

Louis breaks first, sighing deeply and uncrossing his arms. He leans heavily on his elbow on the table, chin in his hand, and he can feel small grits of sugar dig into his bare skin but he ignores it, and looks up through his eyelashes at Harry. There’s a small smile at the corner of his scarlet mouth, and Louis returns it sheepishly.

“I’m sure he’s fine, Lou,” Harry says softly, and Louis determinedly does not cringe at the sound of Zayn’s name for him hanging between Harry’s lips. He nods slightly and takes a big gulp of his coffee, burning his throat.

“So,” Louis says, reaching across the table and tracing his nail along the knob of bone on Harry’s wrist where it delicately hides under his jasmine skin. He watches as the small bones of Harry’s wrist shift, and he takes in the rushing of Harry’s iridescently blue blood under the thin skin.

“So,” Harry agrees.

“What about Niall?” Louis realizes there’s so much he doesn’t know about Harry, and it scares him because he can feel that the arteries of his heart have molded themselves around Harry’s and that last night, when Louis had ripped open his chest and pulled out his heart, thumping and bloody, and plunged it into Harry’s, that he had given him something he would never get back. And yet he feels that all he knows is that Harry drinks JD cokes, his favorite movie is  _Love Actually_ , and he’s from Cheshire.

Harry gives a small chuckle, tangerine in its loveliness, and Louis wraps himself in the sound of it. “Niall is not an ex-boyfriend, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Well, what is he then?” Louis pushes, delicately, like he’s pulling a small plant from the ground. He doesn’t want to upset Harry again, doesn’t want to see the flash of burnt out stars in his viridian eyes, but he craves these things about Harry, the details that make his heart thump with a blood that doesn’t yet run clear with Louis’s light.

Harry shrugs. “Niall is Niall,” he says simply.

Louis arches an eyebrow, and Harry smiles knowingly at him, like he can tell Louis is jealous and he’s pleased about it, and Louis lets out his frustration by gently kicking Harry’s ankle under the table.

“We grew up together,” Harry sighs, kicking softly back. “His family is old money, banking, foreign stuff, I don’t know.”

“And your family? Old or new?” Louis asks. This concept of time and money is foreign to Louis, who grew up with smaller portions at dinner so his sisters could have more, and recycled school notebooks.

Harry smiles ruefully. “New money.” He drums his fingers against the table, eyebrows furrowed like little caterpillars as he looks up at Louis through eyelashes, and Louis can see in his eyes that Harry is silently begging him not to judge him for what his family is. “Oil. Lucrative business.”

Louis nods like he knows about the oil industry.

“Anyways, he came over from Ireland when he was eight, parents got sick of his antics, and we ended up at the same boarding school in Manchester.” Harry smiles like he’s remembering a fond memory, a lost look in his eyes. Louis wonders if he’s imagining a boy with hair like spun gold and eyes that delved too far into Louis’s wrecked heart when he leaned in and whispered secrets about the boy who sits in front of Louis now, hands clasped almost in prayer and eyes that are light-years away.

“Happily ever after?” Louis guesses. He imagines Harry as a child, eyes lit up with the innocence before the world showed him how cruel it was. He wonders when Harry had got so destroyed, when the muscles of his heart were frayed. Was it New York that did it to him? New York, this city of lost dreams and poisonous hope. The glass, the paradise, and the black and white viciousness of the American dream, a vision that saps you of your will to live, ruins you and burns holes in your pockets. At least, that’s what Louis found here in New York. Nothing but betrayal and sin and desperation that gnaws holes in Louis’s bones. He wonders what Harry found in New York, if not this soul-crushing agony that lives in the galaxies of his eyes, if he landed in New York in time to watch his Northern star burn out.

Harry shakes his head. “Not quite.” His face turns wistful, solemn. “We turned seventeen, and the mediocrity and sameness of Manchester was destroying us from within.” He heaves a sigh. “Niall, he’s – he’s made for great things, you know?”

Louis doesn’t know, because he is not made for great things, but he nods along because he recognizes the reverence in Harry’s voice, hears it in his own when he talks about Zayn and the way he paints his soul.

“Are you not?” Louis inquires. “Made for great things, I mean?”

Harry smiles and it’s too sharp, electric and wavering, shattered glass tucked like secrets into his blood-red mouth. “No, I am not. I follow in the footsteps of those greater than me.”

Louis shakes his head, because he refuses to believe that Harry, with fingers born to fly over a piano, is not destined to roam the galaxies, bigger than the stars he orbits in his cosmic journey.

“You are more heavenly than you know, Harry Styles,” he murmurs, and he sees the corner of Harry’s mouth turn up bitterly, watches him shrug.

“We were seventeen and we ran away to London with a few months left before we graduated, stayed with a friend of Niall’s brother, crashed on his couch.”

“And?” Louis prompts.

“We were gonna do great things, you know?” Harry says again. “Niall, he was gonna break the music scene wide open, and I-”. Harry stops again, and shrugs.

“What were you going to do?”

“Great things, I guess.” Harry’s voice is tinged through with lavender pain, his painfully pretty face thoughtful, eyes icy and green with lost dreams.

“What happened?”

Harry laughs loudly, and the sound is not at all the color of sweet oranges and candy-apple redness. His laugh shatters in his mouth, a thousand tiny crystalline pieces that bounce of his crimson tongue and break open the lilac skin of his noble features. Louis wonders what it means.

“They caught up to us, not even three days later. Even in London, city of dreams, their snakelike bonds found us, no matter how much we tried to elude them.”

Louis imagines a seventeen year old Harry, six thousand two hundred and nine days old, wandering around the cold streets of London with a single bag and hope infused in his fingers. He wonders if that moment, when their parents had caught up to the two runaways, is the moment when the ice on Harry’s glass heart froze over and the stardust in his eyes hardened, and the blood in his veins ran with alcohol.

Louis runs his thumb over the orchid skin of Harry’s wrist, feels his heartbeat, and silently urges Harry to continue. Harry sighs deeply and his shoulders slump and he falls forward onto the table, chin dropping into the hand that Louis isn’t holding onto.

“They gave us an ultimatum. If we passed our A-levels, we could have two years to figure all this out.” Harry waves his arm around through the air, and Louis thinks he’s trying to encompass the grand concept of life. There are shadows in his eyes, dreams pulled from his fingers, aching and quiet, aching and quiet, full of tragic disillusionment of the grandeur that Harry Styles is destined for. “Two years to do something with ourselves, and if we couldn’t make it, it was back to England, to work for our parents.”

“And that’s what you’re doing in New York?” He thinks of the way Harry had said before that he was in New York for answers, and he wonders what those answers are meant to hold for this boy with the diamond skeleton and the deadened stars in his eyes. He thinks of the garden in Harry’s ribcage, tiny lilac delphinium flowers and amethyst stars, and wonders when the soil turned dry and the flowers wilted. Wonders if there’s weeds in there now, abandoned and broken.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and there is frozen water in Louis’s titanium heart and a dead garden in Harry’s glass heart and his ribcage of moonlit bones.

Harry nods.

“How long has it been?” Louis questions, his voice quiet.

Harry looks at him, eyelashes a smear of ink along his planetary eyes. “Five hundred and forty seven days.”

“A year and six months,” Louis muses. “And have you done it? Have you grasped life itself?”

Harry shakes his head slowly, eyes big and starry, and Louis’s heart falls through his chest, because this, this is Harry Styles’ story.

Harry Styles lives in an orbital race against time, against duty and reality, and New York is his game, his experiment. He grasps for a tangible meaning to their days and their years are numbered by moons in the sky. His days are measured by the tick of a clock embedded in his skin. Harry is hunted by shackles and this is why he desecrates his music and leaves destroyed people in his wake, in an effort to run from the shadowy monsters that chase him. Louis wonders if Nick is a product of Harry’s destructive nature, or if Nick is the cause of it, but whichever it is, Harry burns a path of powerless desperation and his soul has leaked out of his mouth, his eyes, his ears, and lives in the streets of this city where Harry came to find his dreams.

Louis thinks of his own soul, kept together by nicotine-stained fingers and the touch of a boy with lips painted black, but rotten and festering inside of him with stolen light, and he thinks that Harry’s soul may be lying dying in the streets of New York, but his own is at least intact inside his chest. He wonders, now that Harry owns his heart, has a padlock on him, if Harry searches for Louis’s soul too.

“Has Niall done it?” Louis asks, dreading the answer, because he fears this is part of the problem, fears that Harry stumbles along with glass in his feet and shadows heavy in his heart, while his best friend walks on golden arches.

When Harry nods, his eyes are shiny and his mouth trembles, and Louis reaches across the table and sinks his thumb into the corner of Harry’s raspberry mouth.

“Niall, he-”, Harry stops and clears his throat. “He’s working on a record deal.”

Louis looks at him, this creature with violet hollows under his luminous eyes.

“I’ve got nothing,” Harry says brokenly.

**

Before Louis leaves, Harry tells him he’s playing piano that night at a jazz club. Says, with his eyes like stars, that he would like Louis to come. He asks shyly, with his head tilted downwards as if he thinks Louis is going to say no, as if Louis would pass on the chance to see Harry in his element. Louis covers Harry’s wrist with his fingers and promises him he’ll be there, just so that he can see the light seep into Harry’s eyes and he revels in the brief kiss that Harry presses to his lips as they stand on the pavement before they part, Louis for home and Harry for who-knows-where. Louis doesn’t ask.

When Louis walks in the front door of their flat, he holds his breath, and expects to see Zayn passed out on the floor, or at least some indication that he has been there.

He walks into the kitchen; everything is as they left it last night before the party, their half full cups of tea sitting cold on the counter.

In Zayn’s room, his bed is exactly as they left, covered in clothes, and Louis’s skin prickles in fear because it’s obvious that Zayn did not come home last night.

Louis sits on the couch, bounces his knees and clutches his mobile, several unanswered text messages burning a hole in his outbox.

Zayn could be anywhere. He could be out on one of his artistic rampages, which would explain why he wasn’t answering his phone, but usually there’s that comforting text, and this time Louis’s inbox is empty. He could be lying in an alley somewhere, he could be quietly painting on the Brooklyn bridge, he could, Louis thinks viciously, be waking up in a bed with a sober and regretful Liam lying next to him. Louis hopes for everybody’s sake that it isn’t the third.

His muscles are wound tight and he smokes three cigarettes in a row with the window cracked open while his hands shake with worry and the aftermath of his night with Harry, the significance of which has resonated deeply.

Just then, the door open, and Zayn walks through and it’s like the frames skip and shudder and fast forward and Louis has his hands tight around the bone of Zayn’s jaw, fingers digging into the soft skin at his temples.

“Zayn, Jesus Christ, where have you been,” he gasps, his forehead pressed against Zayn’s. He feels Zayn’s breath, warm and stale with morning, in gentle puffs against his cheeks, and Louis’s heart is beating triple time now that he’s holding Zayn’s russet skin in his worry-shaken hands.

He feel Zayn’s hesitant arms wrap around his waist and Louis ducks his head into Zayn’s neck, breathing in the smell of cigarettes and city and cold that burns his nose. He smells like paint and it’s comforting.

When Louis pulls back, he sees that Zayn’s hands are paint splattered, clothes speckled with drying paint, blues and greens and reds.

“Where were you?” Louis demands, touching his fingers to the bristly stubble that covers Zayn’s jaw. He’s got plum colored bruises under his eyes, hollow with lack of sleep, and Louis spreads his thumb there and feels the soft brush of Zayn’s eyelashes.

“I was out,” Zayn says, his earthly eyes trained on Louis’s face, taking in his own sleep-deprived hollows. “Painting,” he adds.

Louis drops his head onto Zayn’s collarbone that dips and weaves under his skin like the skirt of a Spanish dancer, littered with inky tattoos, his lungs filling with smoky air. “I was worried about you.”

“Really?” Zayn snorts.

Louis lifts his heavy head. “Yes, you weren’t answering my texts.”

Zayn laughs and it’s a bitter laugh, full of turpentine and glass. “You mean you managed to spare a thought while you were fucking that psycho?”

Louis reels back like he’s been slapped. He  _feels_  like he’s been slapped, the sting of Zayn’s words fresh upon his cheek. Zayn’s mouth is contorted into a grimace, his eyes cold as he stares down at Louis.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Louis says quietly. His tongue is thick in his mouth and his lungs are filling up with water, drowning him as he watches the way Zayn’s nebulous gaze track over the bruise on Louis’s neck, marked by Harry’s manic mouth.

“Means what it means.” Zayn stares at him.

“What the fuck, why does everyone keep saying that?” Louis throws his hands up in the air, voice pitching to a shout, because Zayn is supposed to be on his side, he’s supposed to be comfortable smoke and quiet reassurance.

Zayn gazes at him, eyes blank and opalescent in his face, with his eyelashes tangled in a way that reminds Louis of Harry, earthly sienna instead of heavenly jade, but wide and omniscient. He looks away from Louis.

“Zayn, fucking look at me.”

Zayn glares out the window, his profile sharp and unyielding and Louis fucking burns with anger, and he grabs Zayn’s jaw with both hands and wrenches his face towards his.

Zayn looks at him and there’s pity in his eyes, so much that Louis wants to punch him in the face, because no one is allowed to pity him, pity is for the weak, and Louis is titanium with the moon in his hands and the universe as his playground.

“I talked to Niall,” Zayn says shortly. “He says Harry has been ruined.”

“Ruined how?” Louis demands.

Zayn shrugs. “By music, men, drugs.”

“He needs me.”

Zayn looks at him strangely. “Everybody needs somebody, Louis. Doesn’t mean you sell your soul to them.”

“Maybe I need him.”

At that, Zayn’s spine snaps upwards and he towers his full height over Louis, eyes burning with intensity and Louis cowers back from him as Zayn grasps his jaw tightly in hands that have memorized the earthly structures of Louis’s ruined body.

“You do not fucking need anybody,” Zayn snaps, his voice low and rough, and if Louis didn’t know any better, he’d be scared of the way he can feel the imprints of Zayn’s fingers press into the bone of his jaw, the way it feels like coming home and planting his feet in a garden with roots and carefully watered irises, lonely but comfortable. It’s different from the way Harry had bruised his hips last night; that had felt like untying the knots that held him to earth and slipping into a celestial orbit around the mountains and canyons of Harry’s body; it had felt like wandering a dusty and empty garden, apocalyptically decimated, but with the warmness of a body next to him. Zayn presses his thumb into the side of Louis’s mouth, demanding and persistent. “Harry is fucking toxic, Lou, he’s not even human. And you will destroy yourself trying to find his soul.”

Louis stares at Zayn, silently assessing the steel in Zayn’s eyes.

“You say that as if I’m not already destroyed.”

And the cliffs in Zayn’s eyes crumble, eroding like Louis’s titanium heart, and his fingers on Louis’s jaws are suddenly gentle and Zayn presses open kisses to Louis’s slack mouth. It lacks the roaring and ruby revelation that Harry’s mouth had, but it’s sweet and dry and Louis’s fingers wrap around Zayn’s skinny wrists.

“You are not destroyed,” Zayn says firmly, his mouth against Louis’s. “You’re not, you’re-” he struggles with his words.

Louis smiles sadly at him. “Destroyed.”

“Sad,” Zayn corrects him. He pulls Louis into his chest, crushes him against his thin and concave chest, and Louis can feel wet paint under his hairline from where Zayn’s fingers had grasped him and it feels like Zayn marking him, and the thought ripples down his spine in a not altogether comfortable feeling.

“I think I can save him,” Louis whispers, muffled into the skin of Zayn’s collarbones

“Lou, I don’t think there’s anything to save,” Zayn says into his temple, his lips brushing the delicate skin. “Niall, he says Harry let his music destroy him, he said that Grimshaw guy messed with him.”

Louis’s back stiffens under Zayn’s calming hands and he grits his teeth. He knew Nicholas Grimshaw was bad news, the sharp corners of his eyes cunning and full of secrets.

“I want to try.” Louis pulls back from Zayn.

“I feel, like-”, Louis stops and sighs, breath whooshing out in a turquoise gust against the mahogany of Zayn’s skin. “I feel like, there’s something left in there. Like if I save him, I save myself.”

Zayn tilts his chin up to capture his gaze, and Louis sees feathers in Zayn’s inconsolable eyes, dark with sadness. “Louis, you do not need saving, you just need to get out of this godforsaken city. You need a fresh start.”

Louis thinks of the way Harry’s eyes open him up and walk inside the atriums of his heart, sitting down for a cup of tea, putting up pictures of himself and tucking his metaphorical toothbrush into the medicine cabinet, and placing his metaphorical book of poems on the coffee table beside the metaphorical armchair.

“I think Harry could be my fresh start.” Three weeks, that’s all it’s taken, and already there’s this nineteen year old child with his eyes like the arcs of sunrises over the glass of New York, and Louis berates himself for letting down his defense and letting him in. But he’s here, and Louis knows, more than anything else, that Harry Styles will run his course and it will either end in destruction or salvation, but either way Harry Styles is here. Louis decides the best thing he can do is climb in for the ride.

**

When Louis and Zayn reach the jazz club on 24th street that evening, they immediately see a blonde shock of hair and a red face like a ruddy moon waving at them from a booth near the stage.

“Lads!” Niall shouts as they draw near, and when they slip into the booth next to him, he wraps an arm around Zayn and knocks their heads together. Louis wonders just how much they talked last night, because Zayn doesn’t get cozy with people quickly, but he’s got a hand on the back of Niall’s neck and a smile on his face that Louis doesn’t see very much anymore. It hits him that he and Zayn spend too much time alone with their thoughts and their pain and the quiet flat with its paint and German opera, and that this, Harry and Niall, is probably good for them. Human interaction is probably healthy, he thinks ruefully.

Niall turns to him and reaches out a fist, and Louis hesitantly bumps it with his own, and Niall lets out a loud gurgling laugh and grabs Louis’s hand, pumping it up and down. “Good to see you, Lou, good to see ya!” Louis has never seen someone who so easily and accurately personifies the entire idea of sunshine.

“Where’s Harry?” He asks carefully, aware of Zayn’s eyes on him, but he ignores him and cranes his head around towards where the stage is set up with a keyboard in the corner and a few mikes scattered.

“Backstage, hyping himself up. Probably puking,” Niall adds with a furrow of his brows, like he thinks he should be worried, and then shrugs. “He’ll be fine, better to leave him alone when he gets like this.”

Louis nods. Better than Harry drinking himself into a stupor, although that’s entirely possible. Louis has no way of knowing though, so he leans back in the booth and nods to Zayn when he asks if Louis wants a drink. Zayn moves towards the bar, and it’s just Niall and Louis in the booth, Niall humming something that sounds like Ke$ha and tapping his fingers in a disjointed beat on the table. Louis can feel his knee jiggling under the table and wonders if Niall is nervous. For some reason, the idea of Niall being nervous makes Louis able to slide into his sleek confidence, able to talk to Niall about what has been bothering him all afternoon.

“Hey, Niall, I was wondering if I could ask you something?”

Niall turns towards him, eyes blue and guileless and his mouth stretched in a surprised grin, as if he’s surprised to find that Louis is sitting next to him, like he zoned off and forget where he was. Louis takes his easy smile as a go-ahead, and takes a deep breath.

“I was wondering, like, what happened with Nicholas Grimshaw? And Harry?” If anybody knows the twists and turns of this story, it’s Niall. After all, he is the one who told Zayn that Nick had messed with Harry.

Niall’s cornflower-blue eyes are far too knowing as he gazes at Louis, pale eyelashes framing his eyes and his smile jagged and tight against his freckled face.

“What were you wanting to know?” Niall asks as he digs in his pocket for a cigar-case, plucking one out, and cutting the head with a small blade. He sticks it between his lips, lighting it with a silver zippo as he watches Louis with cat eyes. Louis is struck by the idea that Niall, loose and easy and yellow on the outside, is steel bones and hydrogen fusion and tightly coiled strength on the inside. Louis can tell by the taut arch of Niall’s arm as he holds the cigar in his mouth that he’s not nearly as careless as he seems; he holds himself tightly, and the cut of his jaw is carved from marble. Louis feels that Niall is not somebody to be messed with, so he phrases his next question carefully.

“They were together?” Louis probes, even though he already knows the answer.

Niall nods and blows out thick smoke that smells of jasmine and sandalwood, rich and lustrous in Louis’s nostrils. “Yep, long time.” He takes a sip of his amber-colored drink.

“So what happened?”

Niall regards him carefully, eyes cutting over to the bar where Zayn stands and gazes out at the sea of people, his profile lit from behind while he waits for their drinks. When Louis looks back at Niall again, the boy is watching him watch Zayn, and he thinks that Niall has eyes like a panther, colored like a summer sky but sharp like a hunter.

“Grimshaw’s a funny guy,” Niall begins, taking a long drag on the cigar. He holds it casually, dangling between his fingers, and it’s very elegant in a way that Louis never thought holding a cigar could be. He remembers that Niall is born of old money and suddenly he sees Niall differently, takes in the designer label of his fitted jacket and the ring that sits on the little finger of his left hand, a family crest. Louis pulls his eyes back up to Niall, who’s staring at his cigar thoughtfully, teeth pulling at his lips.

“Likes his money clean and his boys dirty and young,” Niall chuckles darkly. “Harry was one of the dirty and young.”

“How so?”

“Innocent, y’know?” Niall taps his cigar against the ash tray that sits in the centre of the table. “It’s the eyes, I reckon.” Louis nods. He knows. It’s the moonstone eyes.

“Well, Grimshaw took Harry and turned him inside out. Couldn’t even tell you how many times he left Harry for other people and then came back.” Louis’s fists clench, fingers cutting crescents into his palms.

“Grimshaw’s a hard man to pin down,” Niall muses. He runs a hand through his hair, standing it up on end and Louis can see the beginnings of dark roots showing. “He thrives on his industry, likes to gather his models and show them off. Likes talent, he does. Collects it.”

A shiver goes down Louis’s spine at the words because fuck if Nicholas Grimshaw doesn’t sound like Louis himself.

“Harry was a prize, I think.” A thick elegant watch lies heavily on Niall’s wrist, interrupting the smoothness of his skin, and Louis watches as the lights of the bar dance off the metal links. “The eyes,” he says again. The parabolas of nebulous lilacs, Louis knows.

“One day Grimmy made a comment about how romantic it would be if Harry wrote him a song.” Niall’s fingers tap against the glossy wood of the table, flex into wide planes, and then come up and pluck the cigar out of his mouth. There’s a long silence, during which Louis waits for the rest of the comment, and Niall steadily sucks in the smoke of his cigar and plays with the ring on his finger. He twists it around and around, light glinting off it harshly. Finally, Niall looks back at Louis. He smiles sadly. “Harry, he was obsessed with that song. I’d never seen him like this. Never saw him, period, actually. He was always holed up in his piano room.”

“Did he do it?” Is there a piece of music out there that encompasses Nicholas Grimshaw in his entirety, imagined by the long silken fingers too talented?

Niall doesn’t answer for a long time and the only noise in their booth is the sound of him breathing out long furls of smoke. He’s watching Zayn at the bar, leaning over the marble countertop to wink prettily like a monarchial butterfly at the bartending girl with the purple hair. They both, Niall and Louis, lean against the cracking vinyl and Louis waits patiently for Niall to answer the question. He thinks that Niall has a habit of starting sentences and then getting lost in his own thoughts, and the words trail off.

Then, Niall shakes his head. He lets out a stream of smoke that smells like hazelnut and money, and long fingered curls of haze rise up above them, haloing around Niall’s blonde hair. “No, he never did it. Never got over it, either. Reckon he went a little mad trying to write this song. ”

Niall’s eyes are tired, slate blue and unflinchingly honest as he stares at Louis. His pale chest is showing underneath his tshirt and Louis counts three dark moles marring the milky skin of his throat. Louis thinks it’d be very easy to fall in love with Niall Horan, all clear ice-blue eyes and smooth charm and disarming kindness.

He nods at Niall, who doesn’t nod back, and instead drums his fingers on the table and carelessly flings an arm around the back of the booth. He keeps his eyes on Louis, such a light blue that they almost look haunting.

“And they’re still friends?” Louis inquires, and traces a nail along the wood grain of the table.

“Nick’s not a bad guy.” Which doesn’t really answer the question. “He didn’t know what he was doing to Harry.”

“Didn’t know?” Louis laughs bitingly. “How do you not tell you’re ruining somebody?”

Niall shrugs, cigar hanging out of the corner of his mouth. “You ever ruined somebody, Louis Tomlinson?”

Louis thinks of unused canvases and unfinished paintings with the outline of a body and the beginnings of sapphire eyes. “No, I have never ruined somebody.”

“Then how do you know what it feels like?” Niall cocks an eyebrow at Louis and rotates the cigar between his thumb and forefinger. Louis is silent.

Zayn walks up, sweating glasses clutched in his hands. He slides into the booth across from Louis and pushes one of the drinks at him. “Bartender says the set should start soon.”

Louis nods and takes a big gulp of his drink, cheap gin burning as it makes its way down his throat. He needs this to be over soon.

He feels a knock against his foot and when he looks up, Niall is staring at him again. He rocks his glass against the table and then draws his fingers through the condensation left on the table, bringing it up to his lips and touching it to his tongue. “Don’t ruin yourself, Louis. It’s the eyes.” Niall nods at Louis, and Louis understands. It’s the eyes indeed.

**

Throughout the entire set, Louis watches Harry. It’s not the same as it was that night at the Royal, when it was Harry in the spotlight with his elegant hands on a grand piano. Tonight, it’s a small stage and he’s tucked in the back with a keyboard, and he moves fluidly, loosely, his arms syrupy over the keys. The music is jazzy and the lead singer croons into the microphone, the soulful sound of it washing over Louis as he watches Harry’s curls hang over his forehead and his fingers lock and move over the keys. He’d almost forgotten the talent that lived in Harry’s hands, was sidetracked by his emerald eyes and carmine mouth. Louis remembers now, remembers that night that he first saw Harry played and that familiar feeling of desperation sinks into him.

Beside him, Niall smokes and drinks and talks to Zayn, occasionally leaning over him to wink at a girl walking by. Louis isn’t fooled by his saffron cheer; he categorizes the way Niall’s eyes flick over to Harry every few minutes, and then to Louis. Louis can feel Zayn’s eyes on him too, carefully watching him, but he ignores it and focuses on Harry and the sensual way he caresses the keys like he’s making love to them, leading them in a slinking waltz and dipping them down with his lips brushing their ebony throats. In the dim light, his eyes look dark in his face and Louis can’t tell if he’s tipsy on alcohol, or drunk on the music, but throughout the entire set, Louis keeps his eyes on Harry.

When the band gives a final crash and the lead singer sweeps himself into a bow, Louis catches Harry’s eyes, and there’s a small weight of warmth left of Louis’s sternum when Harry breaks out into a wide grin at the sight of them all clumped into the booth, Niall with his fingers in his mouth, wolf-whistling and Zayn with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth as he claps a few times and then slouches back into the booth. Harry meets Louis’s eyes and his smile is shy and questioning, but Louis returns it with a reassuring grin and Harry turns his face and smiles into his shoulder. It shouldn’t send a rush up Louis’s spine, but it does.

The band clears off the stage, Harry disappearing behind thick brocade curtains and Louis turns his attention back to Niall, who’s waving towards the entrance to the club, craning his neck around the sea of people at the bar. A few people move to the left and then Liam is weaving his way through people, looking uncomfortable with his ironed shirt and his mouth pursed. As Louis watches, a woman with her top cut low bumps into him and Liam’s mouth moves in what Louis can imagine as a profuse apology, and his hands flail around, cheeks red and flushed.

“Well, look who turned up,” Niall grins at Liam when he walks up to their table, hands twisting in front of him. “Zayn, Louis, you remember Liam from last night, right?”

Louis thinks Zayn’s face has never been whiter and his fingers grasp his drink so tightly Louis thinks he might crush the thin glass. Zayn nods shakily and scoots further into the booth to make room for Liam, who perches on the edge of the seat and nods carefully at Louis.

“Li’s with me,” Niall explains, gesturing with his drink. “The industry.”

“You sing?” Louis asks, cocking his head at Liam. He doesn’t seem like the type, with his buttoned up collar and his twitching fingers. Niall pushes his glass of scotch towards Liam, who refuses with a small shake of his head, and smiles at Louis.

“Yes,” he says. “Or at least, trying to.”

“Bloody brilliant he is,” Niall scoffs through a mouthful of peanuts. “Makes me look like a right wanker with a guitar.”

Liam laughs self-consciously and reaches over Zayn for a handful of peanuts. Louis watches as Zayn starts like Liam has shocked him and then, to Louis’s surprise, he leans against Liam’s shoulder and Liam leans back and they smile at each other like they’ve known one another for ages and Louis feels like there might be a bit of a hole in his right lung.

“So the bartending is just a hobby?” Louis interrogates him, alcohol making his tongue sharp. He can sense Zayn watching him but he keeps his eyes on Liam’s brown ones, Liam with his wide shoulders and big hands that sit too closely to Zayn’s on the table.

Liam nods. “Needed an income,” he shrugs. “Bartending seemed as good as anything, and the classes are easy.”

“What’s so great about this,” Niall says loudly, waving his cigar through the air and trailing heavy smoke behind it, “is that Liam doesn’t even fucking drink.” Niall laughs loudly like he’s made the joke of the century, and even Zayn cracks a smile.

Before Louis can follow up with another question, though, there’s suddenly a shadow over the table and Louis looks up to Harry towering over him, eyes darkly emerald and hazy and there’s a slight sheen of sweat on his forehead. He grins cattishly at Louis, menacingly layered and sharp-edged, and drops into the booth beside Louis, slamming into him until they’re lined up, Harry’s bony hips digging into Louis’s waist.

“Lads,” he nods at the boys and swings one long arm around Louis’s neck and pushes his nose into the hair behind Louis’s ear. He hums into the skin there, privately, and it buzzes and makes goosebumps erupt on the back of Louis’s neck. “Hmmm, you smell good.”

With Zayn’s eyes on him, Louis reaches up into Harry’s matted-with-sweat hair and runs his hand through the devilish curls, tugging gently, and Harry’s mouth drops open in a pant against the side of Louis’s neck and he whines quietly, oblivious of the other boys talking loudly, ignoring the two of them. Harry grips Louis’s thigh with the hand that isn’t wrapped around his neck, and his fingers teasingly inch too close to the seam of Louis’s jeans, and Louis can feel his cheshire-cat smile against his neck.

“Harry,” Niall says, and Harry reluctantly pulls his face out of Louis’s hair and swings around, facing Niall, who slides a sweating glass of whiskey to Harry. Harry grabs and downs the whole thing in one gulp, and Louis sees out of the corner of his mouth Zayn’s eyes widen in shock. Louis thinks that Zayn has barely seen anything, that Louis can tell from the still clear look in Harry’s huge eyes that he doesn’t have that much alcohol in him.

Niall smiles fondly at Harry and leans across Louis to carefully touch his thumb to the corner of Harry’s eye, and it’s such a poignant and knowledgeable touch that Louis can imagine how they must have been as children, adolescents growing into each other. Niall with his easy cheer and Harry’s liquid charm, the two of them golden boys of their school; he can imagine Harry as a fourteen year old with the universe in his hands and nowhere to put it but to share it with the golden boy next to him.

 Louis likes the idea of a whole Harry.

The next few hours pass in a haze of Niall’s jasmine cigar smoke and Harry’s mouth against Louis’s neck and Zayn’s all-seeing lion eyes flitting between Louis, Harry, and then fastening absentmindedly on Liam’s open and cheerfully sober face as he chats with Niall. Every time Harry notices Zayn watching the two of them, he leans in close to Louis and possessively bites under his jaw, presses his fingers under his hairline until Louis’s eyes roll back in his head and his jeans get uncomfortably tight. And every time Louis notices Zayn gazing at Liam with something like moonstruck reverence in his eyes, Louis can feel Niall watching him carefully, and he hears the words “it’s the eyes”, and his alcohol-soaked brain can’t remember if it’s Zayn’s or Harry’s eyes that he’s meant to be careful of.

Close to one AM, Zayn excuses himself for a cigarette and after a few bashful looks, Liam follows and Louis watches them go, eyes trained on the wide muscles of Liam’s back next to the skinny frailty of Zayn’s thin torso.

When Louis looks back around, Harry is lying with his head in Niall’s lap, hidden but for a few of his curls poking up over the table. He absentmindedly kicks Louis’s hip. As Louis watches, Niall leans down, his hair brushing Harry’s cheek as he whispers something in Harry’s ear. He watches the thinness of Niall’s wrist connecting to his small hand with the freckles in the arc of skin between his thumb and forefinger, follows the way Niall’s hand smoothes down Harry side.

When Niall looks up, he catches Louis’s eye and smiles. “Reckon it’s time to head out, eh?” he says, but his eyes are still sharp and calculating. “You boys gonna come by ours for a pint or two?”

Harry pops his head up over the table, his irises thin with alcohol and pupils blown, blocking out the lush green. “Yes! You’re coming!”

Louis nods. He’s powerless to deny Harry anything, and somehow Louis finds that he doesn’t mind so much, especially with the way Harry gives a weak little cheer and then drops his head back down into Niall’s lap. He thinks of the way Harry’s hand had been anchored on his hip all night, the way Harry had shuddered in cosmic ripples of his elegant bones when Louis had combed through his sweaty locks with his fingers.

And then, “It’s the eyes, mate,” Niall says, his voice silky coral, and Louis looks back at him. “It’s the eyes,” he repeats. “Be careful.”

**

On the subway ride back to Harry and Niall’s flat, Harry had stood too close to Louis and his warmth had seeped into Louis’s bones and he felt Niall’s eyes on the back of his head and Zayn’s eyes on the side of his face and Harry’s lips on the back of his neck.

The air was cold but Louis was too warm.

**

Harry and Niall’s flat is elegant, with tall ceilings that echo when they talk in the entryway. It reeks of money, burns in Louis’s nostrils. As Niall pulls out video game controllers from a trunk near the widescreen TV, Louis sees Zayn running his fingers along the ribbed pillars of the wall into the kitchen. It’s nice to know that Louis isn’t the only one who feels entirely out of depth here.

He catches Zayn’s eyes and raises his eyebrows and Zayn smiles slightly at him. Liam walks back into the room then and Zayn’s eyes are immediately following his every move, and Louis sighs, but then Harry walks up behind him and slips his huge hands into Louis’s front pockets and maybe that hole in Louis’s left lung is closed up by eyes like starbursts and a mouth that whispers dirtily in his ear.

They lounge on Harry and Niall’s too nice sofas, Harry with his head in Louis’s lap and his feet in Niall’s, who just rests his hands on Harry’s ankles and continues to destroy Zayn in FIFA. Alcohol seems to have no effect on Niall’s reflexes. It’s interesting, Louis notes, how when they’re slouched around in this sickeningly lavish flat, Louis can see the kid in Niall, underneath all the bravado and Marlon Brando swagger, with his choking cigars and family rings. He’s got a hotdog in his mouth, hanging out the corner as blasé as the way he’d held the cigar there. Louis thinks Niall might be a kid playing at being a grown-up and it makes him want to take the boy under his wing and shield him from whatever it was that made him grow up too soon, whether it was money or inheritance or even Harry.

Louis’s head lolls against the back of the couch. Harrys nimble fingers play idly with the hem of Louis’s tshirt and every once in a while Louis can feel the softness of Harry’s lips against his belly and he resists the urge to smile into his elbow.

After Niall beats Zayn soundly at FIFA for the third time in a row, Zayn throw himself backwards against the floor, moaning pitifully about his empty stomach and his defeated heart. Niall jumps around the room with his fists in the air, thumping on his chest like a gorilla, while Zayn pouts, and Louis laughs so hard he feels like beer is going to come spewing up through his nose. His mind is loose and hazy and full of the curl of Harry’s mouth as he laughs raucously, tears springing in the corner of his eyes, the brightness of the amazon green as he looks at Louis with what Louis thinks is fondness.

“I am hungry.” Niall states loudly, flopping down on the floor next to Zayn as if they’ve been friends for years. His eyes are bleary, limbs loose and floppy and Zayn giggles in an entirely un-Zayn like manner and pokes Niall in the stomach. Niall points at Harry, voice booming and commanding. “Slave! Make me nachos!”

Harry lumbers off into the kitchen, socked-feet dragging in a smooth whisper, and his pants hang low on his hips, exposing the waistband of his boxers and Louis and Niall snicker at the strip of pink that shows.

“Think I’ll help,” Zayn says, and Louis can’t tell what he’s trying to say, his voice too smooth to bely any underlying emotions, but Louis watches as Zayn glides off into the kitchen. He hears the low hum of voices and then a clatter of pans and Harry’s barking laugh. Louis curls into the couch and smiles to himself.

When Zayn and Harry come out of the kitchen ten minutes later, Harry’s smile is so wide it looks painful and Zayn is rolling his eyes, following behind Harry with bowls of salsa balanced in his arms. Louis laughs into his arm, because he can’t remember the last time Zayn looked so domestic. A good meal for them was a Pot-O-Noodle and a piece of cake, but Harry’s got this huge platter of steaming nachos, piled high with sour cream and cheese and vegetables. Niall roars happily and scoops huge chunks of the nacho mountain onto the plates that Harry hands out, and the scene is so comfortable and familiar and warm that Louis feels like he wants to make a rude comment or throw a sarcastic punch at the fact that Liam hasn’t drunk a single thing all evening. But he can’t even bring himself to do it, not with the way Harry’s got a pink apron tied around his jeans and his curls are wild and his cheeks flushed with heat from leaning over the oven. He brings a plate of nachos to Louis, snuggles into his side, and they watch the Fast and Furious with the lights dim, the sound of Niall chomping through his nachos a staccato underneath the soundtrack of the movie. Harry’s got one hand on the inside of Louis’s knee, thumb stroking, and his eyes fixed on the TV like he doesn’t even realize he’s touching Louis.

It’s funny, Louis thinks, that even with the pain and confusion that swirls around them, Harry can still be so loose and easy with his mouth wide and full of cheese, grease at the corner of his lips.  His nuclear eyes aren’t fogged with drink, empty and desperate, a raging maniac, and his mouth isn’t torn open by words that don’t fit in his mouth. Louis can feel Zayn’s eyes on him from across the room, but it feels more protective than possessive.

He can sense Niall’s eyes tracking his every move, but even that feels more like Niall acting as Harry’s sentry rather than a predator.

As they fall asleep on the couch later, Louis drowsily thinks that it’s a shame Harry has no soul, because Louis’s pretty sure he’s falling in love with him and wise men know only fools rush in.  


	10. Chapter 9

It’s a Monday and the sun glints sharply off the piles of snow that litter Louis’s campus, lampposts and tree branches covered in thin sheets of ice from the frozen rain that had descended upon the city the previous night. He can hear the roar of cars along the busy streets just off campus, but the wide, snow-covered lawns are filled with students hurrying towards class, and the scene is so collegiate that Louis almost wants to skip his next class just so he’s not being such a cliché.

The strap of his bag is digging into his shoulder uncomfortably and his fingers are numb from the cold, but there’s a spring in his step, although he pretends as if he doesn’t know the reason for it. He feels like it’s written on his forehead, though, thick black ink that proudly declares that Louis is regularly fucking (making love with?) a boy with moony eyes and a mouth the color of strawberries, and that fact is the reason for the smile constantly curling at the edges of Louis’s lips. Earlier that morning, he’d gotten a text from said moony-eyed boy that simply asked Louis whether he was aware that the giant white splotches on killer whales were not, in fact, their eyes, as he had believed his entire life. Louis had pulled out his phone in class, stared at it in disbelief for a full five minutes, before having to admit that no, he was not aware of that fact. All he got in return from Harry was a string of unhappy faced emojis with a bunch of thumbs down emojis. Louis hates to admit it to himself, but the text had put a smile on his face that lasted for most of the afternoon. It’s cheesy and pathetic and weak but Louis has always found it easy to lie to himself, so he doesn’t think too hard about the fact that a simple text from Harry can make his day brighter.

It’s been almost a month since that night on the balcony, since the night that Louis had tentatively placed his heart in Harry’s hand and closed his fingers around it, hoping that the shine in Harry’s eyes was a promise to handle his bruised heart with care. And since then, Louis had felt like he was teetering on the edge of a precipice, toes hanging over a cliff, but there are always fingers clasped around his and when he looks next to him, there’s always Harry’s giant smile, reassuring. It’s been a strange month, Louis thinks. He hasn’t bought a pack of cigarettes in almost three days, and his bed has two people in it more often than it doesn’t. There are nights spent out at small jazz clubs, bars where Louis and Niall get drunk and cheer for Harry as he plays different gigs, sometimes alone and sometimes with bands. There are mornings waking up in Harry’s bed and smelling bacon and turning his head to smile into a pillow that smells of Harry’s cologne. It’s almost as if Louis can feel the iron fist around his heart loosening every time Harry presses his lips against Louis’s, as if the colors in his life are a little bit brighter.

It’s such a fucking cliché but Harry himself is the biggest cliché of all, with his cheeky grins and horrible jokes, coupled with the devastating moods that Louis has witnessed. It’s been hard. There have been times where all he can see when he looks at Harry is dark eyes filled with something that Louis can’t find a word for – loneliness maybe. Harry’s fingers will be too sharp on Louis’s hips as he fucks into him at 3 am with the light of the moon casting shadows on his angel bones. Sometimes Louis thinks that Harry likes to feel this way, likes to wallow in his desolation, like he finds some sort of sick pleasure in sitting on Louis’s fire escape with his legs threaded through the bars, waving his feet and moodily smoking cigarettes. Louis watches snowflakes drift into Harry’s hair, the curly haired boy hunched over against the cold, as Louis sits on his bed and memorizes lines for a class. He thinks that there’s a glass wall between the two of them, and Louis can press his nose against the glass as hard as he wants, but there’s always that space between them.

So those times are hard. They happen more often than Louis knows what to do with, and he never knows how to fix it, but he gets it, he gets the way Harry’s bones must ache with something heavy and thudding, weighing him down in the core of his being, because Louis feels that constantly

But there are those other times, when they lay on the floor of Harry’s bedroom at 4 pm on a Wednesday with pale sunshine streaming in the blinds, Harry tapping his fingers on Louis’s hipbone. And they have extensive conversations about the best flavor of Lays chips, rambling discussions of whether heaven exists, soft confessions and Louis whispering into Harry’s hair about his dad and his sisters, and all he can feel is Harry’s fingers on his hip, warm and comforting. Those moments where Harry’s eyes are a bright green, shiny and clear of sin and desperation, and Louis realizes that he doesn’t care how many times Harry sinks into his muddy and cruel moods, as long as he still gets those moments when Harry goes on and on about how much he wants a pet porpoise and all Louis can do is stare at the way his mouth moves and marvel at the mind that exists under the head of curly hair.

It’s been a month and Louis doesn’t know what to do with himself, doesn’t know what’s going on, so he just keeps moving forward, which is somewhat of a miracle in itself.

As he walks along with Aiden, cheerfully insulting the professor of their last class, Louis’s phone suddenly starts blaring Drops of Jupiter. Harry had set the song as the ringtone for when he was calling Louis. Louis doesn’t have a reason for why that’s the song Harry chose, and neither did Harry really, but the way he was grinning at Louis with his chin digging into Louis’s hip while they laid on Louis’s bed, that was pretty much enough reason for Louis to do whatever Harry asked

“Hello, you’ve reached the phone of Louis Tomlinson, most spectacular human in the universe, how can I help you?” He chirps into the phone and Aiden rolls his eyes, used to Louis’s hijinks. Louis thinks it’s sad that he’s become predictable.

 “Hi darling, prince of my heart and also my cock, I am taking you on a date!” Harry’s voice booms out through the phone and Louis chokes on his tongue, laughter bubbling up in his throat.

“Prince of your cock?” Aiden gives him a weird look, shakes his head, and scuffs his toe as they walk along. “Oh my god, Harry, where are you? You can’t just say stuff like that in public!” Louis is laughing too hard to care about the people glancing at him as they walk through the winding paths on campus.

“I’m in that Starbucks where I sucked you off in the bathroom after we went to see the new Twilight movie,” Harry says cheerfully. Louis covers his eyes with his hand, ashamed. “Also, the lovely lady behind me is glaring at me.” There’s the muffled sound of Harry unsuccessfully covering the phone with his hand, and then, “Sorry, ma’am, my boyfriend gets possessive, you know how it is.”

At that, Louis feels the urge to chuck his phone at the nearest tree and run away as fast as he can, because boyfriend?  The thought rattles around in his brain uncomfortably though, so he pushes it to the back of his mind.

“Lou, you there?” Harry’s voice floats crackly through the phone, pulling Louis back into the conversation.

“Yep, here,” Louis says and swallows hard.

“Right, so that date? Make yourself free all day this Saturday, okay?”

“Haz, you know what my life is like, right? I wouldn’t be doing anything but lying in bed all day anyways.” Louis snorts, because, really, does Harry think he has any sort of social life anymore, outside of Harry himself?

“A venti caramel cappuccino with extra caramel and extra whipped cream, please,” is all he hears, and he rolls his eyes.

“Harry, are you listening to me?” he asks. Aiden raises an eyebrow at him, jerks his head along the path, and Louis waves him along, sitting down on a park bench. Aiden hurries off, head bent low against the wind. The wood of the bench is cold underneath Louis’s ass and he curls in on himself, listening to the sounds of coffee-shop chatter from Harry’s end of the phone. “Harry?”

“Do you have sprinkles?” he hears. Louis rolls his eyes and fights the smile that’s threatening to overtake his face. There’s a pause and then Harry’s voice is clear over the line.

“Lou, did you know they don’t put sprinkles on cappuccinos at Starbucks?” Harry sounds so offended that Louis giggles a little bit, in disbelief that this boy who can so easily destroy Louis with one look, and almost threw himself off a balcony, is now in a state of disbelief over the lack of available sprinkles at Starbucks.

“No, love, I wasn’t aware,” Louis sighs dramatically and pulls his knees up against his chest, burrowing into his coat away from the cold that’s trying to get into his sleeves. He digs his chin into his knees, tucks his fingers inside the sleeves, and holds the phone up to his ear with his shoulder. It’s the beginning of February, isn’t it almost spring?

“Well, they don’t, and I think that’s a shame.” Harry huffs down the line. “So this Saturday?”

“What are we doing?” Louis asks trepidatiously.

“It’s a surprise!” Harry crows excitedly, and then there’s a large slurping noise as he takes a sip of his cappuccino. It sounds ridiculously frothy and Louis wonders if the person at Starbucks actually gave Harry extra whipped cream like he asked for. He wonders if Harry has a whipped cream mustache. God, Louis is in over his head, if he’s imagining Harry with a whipped cream mustache and the idea of it is making the corners of his mouth turn up.

“I don’t like surprises,” Louis says petulantly.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Louis,” Harry says airily. There’s another gurgling slurping noise. “Everyone loves surprises!”

“Not me,” Louis insists. “And stop slurping your coffee in my ear, you are a child.”

Harry takes a particularly noisy gulp, and then immediately chokes and Louis giggles like a fucking 10 year into the phone.

 “You’ll like this one, I promise,” Harry assures him, his voice a little raw from choking on his coffee.

There’s a pause. To be honest, Louis is pretty sure he’ll like anything Harry plans for them. It’s unfortunate, but he’d probably be happy with the date consisting of sitting at the kitchen table and staring at each other.

“Ok,” he says, quietly.

“Ok,” Harry says back, and Louis can hear the smile in his voice, can imagine the way Harry’s eyes are probably smushing at the corners like they always do when he smiles too big for his face. “I gotta go, I have to practice for that gig tonight.” There’s a slam and then all the background noises from Harry’s end of the phone stop, and Louis knows he’s just got to his flat.

“Alright. Are you still coming over after?” Louis imagines Harry standing in the entry way of his flat, balancing his coffee in one hand and trying to unwind his scarf from around his neck. He can see Harry spilling coffee on himself, maybe accidentally strangling himself a little bit. He probably toes off his shoes in the exact same way Louis has seen him do more times than he can count, pulling them off without untying them. Louis doesn’t know what it means that he has memorized the way Harry takes off his shoes.

“Of course, I wouldn’t think of missing our Batman marathon,” Harry chuckles, teasing.

“I’ll even make pasta!” Louis laughs into the phone.

There’s silence.

"Or maybe i"ll pick up Chinese on my way home?" Harry proposes with barely concealed laughter.

“Hey, the noodles were only a little chewy last time!” Louis protests.

“Whatever you say, Lou,” Harry laughs into the phone. “Gotta go, see you tonight!”

“Good luck at your gig, babe,” Louis says as he stands up from the bench, his knees creaking from being bent for so long. Cold whooshes up the back of his coat and he shivers.

“Thanks, Lou,” Harry says warmly, and there’s another pause. And then, “lov-“

Nope, no, not happening, not right now today, don’t ruin today, Louis thinks, so he cuts Harry off with “Alright, bye!” and ends the call before Harry can say anything else.

***

It’s midnight. Harry is late and he hasn’t called and Louis doesn’t know whether he’s supposed to be pissed or worried. He had gotten orange chicken from the Chinese restaurant down the street and even used real plates, rather than the paper plates that he and Zayn like to use, because it means fewer dishes to be done. The chicken is now cold, even after multiple reheatings every time Louis thought he heard a knock at the door that turned out to be some annoying neighbor banging on their wall. There are even juice glasses full of red wine sitting on the counter looking forlorn and Louis downs both his and Harry’s, a frown cutting between his eyebrows. They should probably get wine glasses one day, so Louis doesn’t feel like an 8 year old every time he gets drunk on shitty wine. He sighs heavily.

He doesn’t know why he’s surprised; Louis’s pretty used to people blowing him off, not showing up. It’s routine, he’d probably be more surprised if Harry had shown up like he was supposed to, over an hour ago. The flat is quiet. Zayn is out, Louis doesn’t know where. That too has become more of a frequent occurrence, walking into the flat calling out a cheerful “Zayney, love, I’m home!” and receiving no answer. Louis doesn’t admit to himself that it’s fucking depressing.

Louis sits on the couch, curled up under the afghan blanket he’d set out for the two for them, and stares at the small stack of Batman movies sitting by the TV set. The sky outside the window is inky, the sounds of cars rushing by on the streets below him a comforting noise against the ringing silence in the flat.

At 12:30, when Harry still hasn’t shown up, Louis finds himself sitting out on the fire escape, leaning against the hard brick of the building with the afghan wrapped around his shoulders, the half full bottle of wine sitting next to him. The cold wind makes the edges of the blanket flap and he pulls it tighter around his shoulders, tucking his socked feet under him. An ambulance siren goes by and he wonders with half a mind if someone in the city is dying. Probably a lot of people in the city are dying right now, he thinks. Maybe he’s one of them. Maybe Louis is a little bit dramatic. Maybe the red wine makes him a little drowsier and stupider than usual. A half empty pack of cigarettes lies beside him and he despises himself for the cigarette currently between his fingers but he hates Harry a little bit more for not showing up.

When his throat is feeling raw and he can’t feel his fingers, Louis climbs back in the window and into the dark flat. He doesn’t want to give up and go to bed, because that would be admitting that Harry isn’t showing up and as much as he doesn’t want to, Louis wants to give Harry a chance to prove himself.

Suddenly the buzzer by the door is ringing loudly, shocking Louis out of his thoughts. He hurries over, presses the button, and hears loud heavy breathing coming through the buzzer.

“Lou?” Harry’s voice comes through the speaker, crackling and buzzing and a little slurred. Fuck. “Louuuuuuuu, you there?” Harry whines into the speaker and it sounds like he has his mouth pressed up right against the speaker.

“Harry, are you fucking drunk?” Louis demands into the speaker, his finger pressing the button so firmly he can see the skin around his nail turn white.

“Nope, nope, nope, just happy and horny, wanna see you, let me up?” Harry’s voice is heavy, the words dragging out, and Louis knows better than anyone what drunk sounds like, but he presses the button anyways and then Harry’s voice is gone. Louis imagines him climbing the stairs, feet tripping every step. Or maybe he’s in the elevator. Probably terrorizing somebody from Louis’s flat building. He wonders if he should let Harry in if he’s drunk.

There’s a heavy knock at the door, but when Louis goes over he doesn’t open it all the way, instead letting the chain catch and only opens it a few inches. Harry stands there and he smiles blearily at Louis. His eyes are glassy, dark. Mouth is red, stained berry colored. Hair wild, black collared shirt open and revealing the pale skin at the base of his throat, and Louis remembers that bruise he’d put there once upon a time. He closes his eyes against the memory.

“You gonna let me in, or make me stand out in the cold?” Harry says and his voice is heavy around his words, tongue moving like it’s too big for his mouth.

“You’re in the hallway,” Louis says quietly. “Not outside. Why are you drunk? And late?”

Harry blinks at him. “Am I late?”

            Louis sighs heavily and nods, forehead resting against the door. Harry pushes slightly at the wood but it doesn’t budge, the chain holding it in place, and he pouts.

“Am I drunk?” Harry wonders out loud, and Louis nods again. God it’s too late at night for this and now all Louis wants to do is go to bed, in his empty bed without a long gangly-limbed boy sprawled next to him.

Harry giggles, the sound long and low and creeping under Louis’s skin. “Sorry, babe, some girls bought me some drinks after the gig and I didn’t want to be rude.”

Louis shrugs.

“Can I come in?” Harry’s eyes are dark, narrowed at Louis and he pushes a little more insistently at the door. Fuck fuck fuck where is Zayn when Louis needs him?

“Not sure that’s a good idea,” Louis says softly into the grain of the door, not wanting to look Harry in the eye, not wanting to see the alcohol swimming deep in his irises. Harry makes a huffy grumpy noise and when Louis looks up, his mouth twists cruelly.

“Yeah?” Harry asks roughly. “Gonna push me away again, Lou?” His eyes are mean, almost black, and Louis wants to cry because he hates drunk Harry, he hates him with a burning hatred as deep as the alcohol that drowns in Harry’s bloodstream right now. He can feel tears pricking at the corners of his eyes and he blinks furiously against them, doesn’t want to give Harry the satisfaction of knowing he’s got to Louis again. He thinks back to the afternoon, sunny and happy, sitting on the bench and listening to Harry be ridiculous on the other end of the phone. It feels like centuries ago, now that he’s got Harry pushing at the door, eyes glazed over and mouth pulled up in a unhappy frown.

“Harry, maybe you should go home,” he says, fixing his eyes on the bottom of Harry’s chin.

“Just let me come in, just let me make it better, ok?” Harry croons but the sound isn’t comforting, it grates against Louis’s ears, its sounds jagged and silky all at the same time and he hates it, he hates Harry.

“No.” Louis says firmly and goes to shut the door, but before he can, Harry sticks his foot in the crack left open by the chain and thumps his fist against the door, the sound echoing around the hallway and Louis prays that none of his neighbors come out to see what the ruckus is.

“Let me in.” Harry’s voice is low, desperate. It’s similar to that night on the balcony, manic cruelty wavering through every note of his voice, and Louis can smell the alcohol on his breath.

Louis blinks against the tears in his eyes.

“Louis,’ Harry whispers. “Louis, let me in, it’s okay, I’m fine.” Louis shakes his head roughly, but Harry snakes a hand into the crack of the door and strokes his fingertips down Louis’s throat where it’s bared above the hood of his sweatshirt, making Louis jerk backwards like he’s been burned. There’s hurt in Harry’s eyes, but Louis doesn’t fucking care, because who does Harry think he is that he can show up at 1 in the morning, hours late, and demand to be let into Louis’s flat?

Harry breathes heavily, and his forehead falls into the door with a thunk. His eyes are closed. “Please.”

If Louis lets Harry in, there’s nobody here to stop Harry from doing whatever he wants. Louis knows he’s no match for Harry’s height and his broad shoulders, and even though he doesn’t think Harry would actually hurt him, he doesn’t know Harry well enough to know that for certain. There’ve been people; there’ve been men who thought it was okay to toss Louis around, who looked at his slight frame and saw someone they could bully into doing their bidding, and then leave sore purple and black handprints on his hips and chest as a mark of their dissatisfaction. He wonders desperately where Zayn is.

If he doesn’t let Harry in, and Harry tries to stumble home drunk in the dark, who knows what will end up happening to him. Run over, mugged, beat up. God, it’s so fucking unfair for Harry to force Louis to make this decision.

After a minute of heavy breathing and whispered pleas from Harry, Louis lets the chain out and opens the door. Harry falls inside and then straightens, pushing his hair out of his dark green eyes. His mouth is so wide, so full and lovely, and contorted bitterly into a grimace as he stares at Louis from the doorway. The door shuts with an ominous click behind him.

“You weren’t going to let me in,” he accuses.

Louis shakes his head.

“Why?” Harry demands sharply. His eyebrows descend down his face, dark and angrily furrowed above his eyes that glitter in the dark room.

“Why are you drunk?” Louis counters loudly. “I fucking waited for you, you prick, we-” he angrily scrapes at the tears welling in his eyes, “we had a fucking night planned.”

“I told you, some people bought me drinks!” Harry exclaims harshly. Louis sees his fists clench at his sides, and he shrinks back away from Harry, backing up until his bum hits the back of the couch. Harry pulls off his jacket, throws it over the back of the chair. His sleeves are rolled up, like usual, his skin so milky pale and glowing in the moonlight.

“Right, some girls,” Louis sneers, his lips curling aggressively in a way that feels so familiar to him, and yet he feels like he hasn’t been this poisonous in ages. But he narrows his eyes, hunches his back, and feels the hair on the back of his neck rise as Harry’s jaw gets tight and stubborn. The corners of Harry’s mouth are white, full lips pressed together tightly. “Did you fuck them, too? You did, didn’t you?”

“What the fuck, Lou?” Harry spits, his eyes wide. “Where the fuck is this coming from?”

“I waited for you!” Louis shouts, and he doesn’t even care if the neighbors hear him, because fuck this, fuck Harry, fuck everything about this night. “I waited for you all fucking night, you can’t just show up drunk and think it will all be okay!”

“It was like three drinks!” Harry yells, the sound bouncing around the dark room. “Why are you overreacting about this?”

“You promised! You promised you would be here, we fucking planned this night for ages!” Louis can’t hold back the tears now, hot and angry, spilling down his cheeks. He fucking hates himself for crying, but he’s always been one of those people who cries when they’re angry, and he’s angry, so fucking angry he could punch somebody, thinks he might punch Harry if he gets closer.

“Lou, what is this?” Harry asks desperately, taking a step toward Louis, making Louis flinch and shrink back against the couch. Harry stops, his eyebrows pulled together. His words are still so sunken, heavy and loose, and his voice is slow all the time, but this just sounds so disconnected and so unlike the dorky and happy boy Harry usually is. Harry has been drunk lots of times since the night that Louis let Harry sink into him, let Harry get a hold on him, of course he has, but it’s always been with the other boys, or with just Louis, and then it’s just cheerful tipsiness, not this wild and cruel melancholic drunkenness that he gets into when he drinks by himself. Or after he’s been playing piano, Louis thinks brokenly. It’s the piano, it’s the music, it always fucking is.

“You promised,” Louis breathes in shakily, his voice wavering. “You said - you fucking said you would be here,” he angrily swipes at his cheeks, and Harry blurs in front of him, hot tears clouding Louis’s vision. “I, I got dinner, and I-” he glares at Harry through his watery vision, “I bought wine and you didn’t even show up.”

 “I don’t understand,” Harry says, lost and confused. He wipes his hand across his mouth.

“No, you’re right, you don’t fucking understand,” Louis bites out, running a hand through his hair.

“Well then I don’t know what you want me to do!” Harry snarls viciously. “Why don’t you just let me fucking know what I’m doing wrong and then let me fix it?”

Before Louis can answer, the front door opens and Zayn is standing there, and all the breath in Louis’s chest whooshes out in a big rush, relief flooding through him. Zayn takes in the situation, Louis cowering against the back of the couch and Harry staring down at him, fists clenched at his sides and eyes flashing, and then he springs into action.

As Louis watches and wipes the tears from his face, Zayn grabs Harry’s hands firmly and pulls him into the kitchen. His jaw is firm, the slope of his back held taut, and Louis wildly wonders where he was. As he watches Zayn roughly drag Harry into the kitchen, Harry looks back over his shoulder, and his eyes are so dark and narrow and cruel that Louis feels sick to his stomach, and he turns away, stalking down the hallway and slamming the door behind him, locking it. He sinks to the ground. His chest feels like it’s caving on him and his fingers shake, he wants a cigarette, but he left the pack out in the living room and he doesn’t want to leave his room.

Fuck this, fuck every feeling he’s ever had for Harry, fuck Harry. He knows he’s probably overreacting, knows it’s just one night, but the regularity of this kind of situation, it sits so heavily on his bones. Louis gets his hopes up, he falls in love with the brightness of a person, and they turn out to be just as dark and gritty as every other person, they let him down and then they blame him. He doesn’t need this from Harry, even if he did think Harry was different. He doesn’t  _want_  this. Louis scrapes at his eyes, the cotton of his sweatshirt soaking up the tears that are still pooling in his eyes, and he tries to control his breathing. His back is up against the door and over the harshness of his own breathing he can hear the clatter of dishes in the kitchen. Zayn is saying something, loud, Louis would recognize his voice anywhere and his heart expands so much with love for Zayn that he wonders if maybe there’s even enough room for Harry in his heart.

It must be close to twenty minutes that Louis sits there with the wood of the door digging into his back uncomfortably. His feet are cold. There’s silence from the kitchen now, or maybe they’re just talking so quietly that Louis can’t hear them. He wonders what Zayn is saying to Harry. He wonders if Harry is even still here. Louis drops his forehead onto his knees.

There’s a soft knock on the door. Louis doesn’t answer but through the crack in the door, he can hear heavy breathing.

“Lou.”

It’s Harry. His voice sounds hollow through the wood and Louis leans heavily against the door, rapping his knuckles once against the frame so Harry knows he’s there. He feels safe knowing that Zayn is in the flat and that his door is locked. Louis doesn’t know if he wants the door to be locked so that Harry can’t get to him, or so that he can’t get to Harry, because Louis is terrified that if he opens the door, he’ll let Harry in and he’ll let Harry wrap him up and he’ll let Harry back in and he just, he can’t fucking do that.

“Louis,” Harry says. It sounds like his mouth is up against the crack in the door and Louis sighs heavily.

“Louis, I’m sorry.” Harry breathes softly and Louis fights back the tears threatening to well up in his eyes again. Fuck Harry for sounding so lovely even through an inch of wood and even through the alcohol running thickly in his desecrated blood. “Zayn said you had a boyfriend who hit you.”

Louis squeezes his eyes shut tightly. Zayn knows, he knows everything, even when Louis doesn’t say it.

“Boyfriends,” he says quietly.

“What?”

“Boyfriends. Plural,” Louis leans his head heavily against the door, feeling his eyelashes brush the wood. “More than one.”

There’s a harsh intake of breath, and then, “Lou, you know I would never touch you.”

“That’s what they all said too.”

“But I-” Harry struggles. “I wouldn’t, I would never-”

“Harry.”

“Louis, you have to believe me. I, you know-” Harry’s voice cracks and then, “I think I lov-”

“Stop it. Don’t say it.” Louis presses his face into the wood, mouth at the crack of the door and nose squishing uncomfortably.

There’s silence.

Then, “let me in, sweetheart,” Harry whispers, voice muffled like he too has his face against the door. Louis imagines him sitting out there in the dark hallway, face pale and pretty in the moonlight, with his forehead against the door, just inches from Louis’s own.

“Why should I?” Louis demands, mouth against the door. Why should he? So he can let Harry flaunt the fact that he’s still holding Louis’s heart collateral? So that he can one by one snip the trailing arteries and laugh in Louis’s face as his heart bleeds to death all over Harry’s too-talented, too-pale, too-big hands?

“I just want to kiss you, please.”

Louis doesn’t respond to that, because what do you say to that? Do you say no? Louis wonders what it would be like to kiss Harry when he’s been crying, wonders if Harry would like the taste of salty tears in his mouth.

He stands up shakily. His feet are still cold. When he opens the door, Harry scrambles up, long limbs unfolding and his hands reach out towards Louis’s face, but Louis backs up into the room and Harry follows, his eyes loose and drooping, a lighter green than they were half an hour ago. Louis wonders if Zayn made him drink water, made him eat something and sober up.

“Please just-” Harry’s fingers reach out to Louis, “just let me kiss you, ok?”

Louis nods and then Harry is so close to him, crowding in, and his fingers are achingly delicate on Louis’s jaw and he rests his forehead against Louis’s. “Not gonna hurt you, not gonna hurt you ever,” Harry babbles against his jawline. Louis closes his eyes. Harry, this close, smells like sweat and cigarettes and vodka, but god, underneath that, he can smell the familiar scent of Harry’s cologne and whatever that indescribable smell is that’s just pure Harry, pure boy and human. He wraps his arms around Harry’s narrow hips and when Harry presses his lips against Louis’s, he knows they can both taste the saltiness of Louis’s tears and then he wonders if Harry was crying too and he imagines the way their tears mix in their mouths, salty and desperately oceanic.

Their lips move together, Harry just pressing soft kisses to his mouth and he can feel his eyelashes brushing his cheeks, soft.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have been late, I knew you were waiting for me,” Harry whispers into Louis’s mouth and his fingers pull gently through the hairs at the back of Louis’s neck. “It was just one drink and then it turned into a few more, and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Louis just nods and threads his fingers together at the small of Harry’s back. Harry’s shirt is tucked in, so he pulls it out, sticks his cold fingers up the back of his shirt and smiles softly at the small gasp that Harry makes when the coldness of Louis’s fingers touch his warm skin.

Harry leans away from him, eyes dark and searching as he peers into Louis’s. “Are we okay?”

Are they? Louis feels like he doesn’t have a choice, but then he asks himself if he even wants a choice, if a choice is even necessary, because wouldn’t Louis just choose Harry every time?

So he nods and Harry breathes out like he’s relieved, tugs Louis in closer to him, and buries his face in the top of Louis’s head.

“I have to go see Zayn,” Louis whispers into the side of Harry’s neck. He can feel Harry stiffen under him but he pulls away anyways and looks up at Harry, who nods jerkily, his eyes unreadable. “I’ll be back in a minute, just-” he waves his fingers, “just don’t go anywhere?”

Harry nods carefully and releases Louis.

The lights are all off in the flat, but there’s a light shining out of the kitchen. When he reaches the doorway, Louis sees the silhouette of Zayn standing in front of the open fridge, staring into its depths like it holds the answers to life.

“Hey,” Louis says quietly, clasping his hands in front of him. Zayn jumps, startled like a rabbit. He turns around and his face sags in relief when he sees Louis. He closes the fridge door, walks across the tile in soft footsteps, his socks blanketing any noise. His hair is soft, flopping against his forehead and he’s wearing his glasses, which Louis hasn’t seen in in a while.

“Hey.” Zayn reaches out, sinks his thumb into the corner of Louis’s mouth, something he’s done for so long that Louis has lost track of when it even started. Zayn drags his thumb across Louis’s lip, and then wipes away any remnants of shiny tears that glisten on his cheeks. “You ok?”

Louis nods. He reaches out, careful fingers on Zayn’s wrist. “Thank you,” he says quietly. Zayn doesn’t say anything, just smiles gently at Louis, and nods.

“Where were you tonight?” Louis asks, closing the distance between them and resting his head on Zayn’s shoulder. He feels Zayn’s hands come up, run down his spine like he’s assuring himself that Louis is whole, complete, alive. Louis wonders if he’s any of those three.

Zayn’s breath catches in his throat. “Um-” he starts and then coughs slightly. “I was with Liam, he- he knew of this place with good cheesecake, so we-” he arms tighten around Louis and he clears his throat, “we went.”

Louis nods, his cheek rubbing against Zayn’s shoulder. Alright. It would be really shitty of Louis to throw back everything Zayn did for him tonight by making some cruel remark about spending time with Liam, how exciting it must be to eat cheesecake with him on a Monday night, he just sounds like a really awesome person, wow Zayn well done good job, good catch.

He doesn’t. Louis’s a shitty person, not a monster. “And was the cheesecake good?”

Zayn laughs quietly in Louis’s ear; it sounds like relief. “Yeah. We should go, you and me.”

Louis nods again. “Okay.”

They pull back from each other and Louis wonders when they became so careful with each other. He doesn’t have an answer.

“I should go make sure Harry hasn’t thrown himself out the window or something,” Louis says heavily. He wishes he were joking.

“Is that a possibility?” Zayn says worriedly, his eyebrows scrunched down.

Louis shrugs. Who knows?

Zayn still looks concerned, but he leans in, as if to kiss Louis goodnight, and then at the last minute he pauses, breath washing over Louis’s lip. And then Louis turns his face, and Zayn kisses him high on the cheekbone instead.

It’s probably the first time in years that Zayn hasn’t kissed Louis goodnight on the mouth, and Louis doesn’t know what it means that he’s relieved, that he’s already thinking about the boy back in his bedroom.

When he returns to his bedroom, he almost expects to see the window open and Harry gloomily sitting on the fire escape, maybe perched on the railing and waiting for Louis to come back and see the grand finale, see the jump. There’s a knot in his stomach when he pushes open the door, but then it loosens when he catches sight of his bed.

Harry is spread eagled on the bed, mouth open and snoring, curls moving gently as he breathes out. He’s only managed to get his trousers halfway down his legs and his shirt is still buttoned up. His feet are bare, hanging off the edge of the bed, because Louis’s bed is too small for how tall and gangly Harry is.

Louis walks to the window, shuts it. He pulls off his jeans and his socks, lets them fall on the floor. He puts the hood of his sweatshirt up. It’s cold. Harry snorts in his sleep, shaking his head slightly as if he’s trying to get the curls out of his face. Louis lets him suffer a little bit more, but he pulls Harry’s jeans off all the way. Harry’s legs are so long, thin. Bone-white.

He doesn’t bother trying to get Harry out of his shirt; there’s no way he’d be able to lift Harry up without waking him up, and at this point, he feels like it would be cruel to make Harry wake up just to take his shirt off. Instead Louis just pushes Harry’s limbs over on the bed and crawls in beside him. He tugs the blanket up so it’s covering both of them and pulls his fingers inside the sleeves of his sweatshirt.

Harry snuffles again, nose twitching, so Louis takes pity on him and moves the curl off his face. In his sleep, Harry smiles slightly. He looks so much younger. He doesn’t look drunk. His eyelashes are a dark smear against his closed eyes, lips open and full, little breaths whistling past his teeth. Looks like Snow White, all pale skin and red lips. When Louis lines himself up against Harry, he curls around Louis’s body like a comma. Louis tucks his hands under his body, presses against the long expanse of Harry’s chest, and hates himself.

***

The week passes slowly. The guilt in Harry’s eyes crowds the green, but they don’t talk about that night, except to exchange silent apologetic kisses on Tuesday morning, when they woke up with the sun streaming in and Harry’s arm wrapped around Louis’s hip. Louis doesn’t know what they would say anyways. So they say nothing, and Louis goes to class, and he goes to Harry’s for dinner on Thursday night and plays FIFA with Niall while Harry putters around and makes brownies. It’s domestic, it’s homey, and it hurts Louis’s heart because he wants it so badly, wants it to continue, and hates himself for wanting this kind of life, something he’s never wanted.

He and Harry are maybe a little too polite around each other, but nothing really that abnormal, and yet Niall keeps touching Harry’s elbow, his shoulder, peering into his eyes. While Louis’s there, at least, Niall doesn’t say anything, doesn’t push it. He briefly circles Louis’s ankle with his fingers when they’re lying on the couch, full of brownies, and when Louis looks over, Niall’s eyes are just soft and blue and concerned, but he doesn’t say anything, and Louis’s okay with that, so Niall is too. 

Saturday morning begins with Louis’s phone buzzing under his face, abandoned when he fell asleep in the middle of talking to Harry on the phone the night before.

“Wuzzup,” he says drowsily, tucking the phone between his shoulder and his cheek, and burrowing back into the pillows. It’s cold in his room, the ever-constant draft, and his toes are freezing.

“Hey, love, wakey wakey!” Harry’s voice chirps through the line, sunshiney and far too cheerful for how early it is.

“Haz, it’s so early,” Louis groans and smushes his face into the pillow.

“Lou, it’s like 11:30,” Harry laughs. “Today’s the day! Surprises today!”

“I hate surprises,” Louis grumbles, but he swings his legs out of bed, wincing as they hit the cold floor.

“Not this one!” Harry sings. “Meet me at the corner of Spring and Lafayette, by that lobster bar we went to with Zayn, okay?”

Louis makes an incoherent noise as he bends over to pull his slippers on, but Harry just laughs. “30 minutes, okay?”

“Fine, fine, I’m going to shower, leave me alone,” Louis mumbles as he slouches out of his room and into the cold hallway. He can hear the TV in the living room, the sound of that TLC show where they film brides trying on dresses. Of course Zayn would be watching that.

Harry whistles over the phone and chuckles. “Think of me, yeah?”

“Shut up. See you in a bit,” Louis snorts and ends the call and hops in the shower.

15 minutes later, Louis walks out into the living room and stops short. Liam is sitting on the couch, balancing a giant bowl of cereal on his knee. He’s wearing a sweater of Zayn’s. Louis’s seen it before. He’s worn it before.

“Hey,” Louis says, and Liam’s head whips around and he winces like he’s cracked it.

“Louis! Hey!” Liam smiles, that puppy smile, droopy brown eyes and crinkles at the corners. It’s hard not to smile back at someone who looks like that, Louis thinks, so he does, and Liam’s smile gets a little bigger and a little looser.

 “Morning, Lou!” Zayn’s head pops around the corner of the kitchen and then disappears again, and Louis follows him into the kitchen.

“Did Liam sleep over?” Louis asks and yawns, pretending like he doesn’t care what the answer is. He opens the fridge, drinks the milk straight from the carton, and ignores Zayn’s disapproving glance.

“Um, yeah?” Zayn says hesitantly. “He came in late last night, sorry if he woke you?”

Louis shakes his head. “Nope. No problems here, none at all, just dandy!” He pulls on his coat, slips his keys into his pocket. “I’m off, I have a day of surprises waiting for me, apparently.” He rolls his eyes and stuffs his feet into his shoes.

“Harry?” Zayn guesses, a little smile at the corner of his lips. Louis nods. “Well, have fun, I guess. Doesn’t Harry know you don’t like surprises?”

Louis shrugs. “I told him. He said he didn’t care.” Zayn laughs.

“Have fun, you two!” Louis says as he rearranges his hair in the mirror beside the front door. “Don’t get into any trouble, don’t watch too much TLC, it fucks with your brain cells!” He whips out the door before either of the two boys can respond. He’s not sure he can stay in the flat for one more minute, not with Liam sitting there like he belongs on the couch, wearing Zayn’s sweater, eating out of Louis’s favorite cereal bowl. He wonders if Liam slept on the couch last night, or if he and Zayn shared Zayn’s bed. Louis finds he really doesn’t want to know the answer.

He sits moodily in the corner of the subway train as it rumbles along. Usually Louis likes to watch the people on the subway, watch the adults in their suits reading the  _Journal_  and thank his lucky stars that he’s not an adult yet. He likes to watch the people who look like they’re just on the train for the ride, don’t really have a destination, and sometimes that’s him too.

Today he’s not in the mood. Louis slouches in his seat, headphones snug in his ears and Two Door Cinema Club rattling his brain around, waking him up. He can’t stop tapping his foot.

He gets off at the Spring St stop, comes up out of the underground into the bright sun, blinding him. The air is cold against his face but it wakes him up and he blinks rapidly to stop his eyes from freezing.

“Lou!” A voice calls, and he sees Harry leaning against a street lamp, hands tucked into his pockets. His face is big and pretty like a moon, looking out over the bright red scarf wrapped around his neck, nestled into the black collar of his pea coat. Harry’s cheeks are flushed, pink from the cold.

Harry kisses him as soon as Louis’s within reach, pulling him in and pressing a quick kiss against his upper lip, and it’s so dumb, it’s so fucking pathetic, but the cold ball in Louis’s belly loosens just with Harry’s touch, and all thoughts of Liam and Zayn fly out of his mind. All he can concentrate on is the warm touch of Harry’s fingertips on his cheek and the way he laughs into Louis’s mouth when someone bumps into them from behind, causing Louis to fall into Harry’s chest. Louis can’t even help but smile, and then laughs when Harry pokes his finger in the corner of his smile and pushes upward, pulling Louis’s mouth out of shape and into a big garish grin.

 “So what’s on the agenda for today?” Louis asks as they walk down the street, moving with the crowds of people that swarm around them. He has one hand tucked into Harry’s pocket, because he was dumb and forgot mitts. “’Cause first up might have to be coffee, or else I’ll fall asleep.”

“No coffee allowed where we’re going, but after that, yeah?” Harry smiles over at him, curls hanging in his face and his mouth is cherry red, wide and full.

“No coffee allowed?” Louis scoffs. “What kind of hell hole are you taking me to?”

Harry grins like he has a secret tucked in his mouth. “You’ll see!”

They walk down Lafayette, taking turns pointing out people walking by and making up stories for them. Louis drives Harry to hysterics by telling a lengthy story about the woman waiting for the bus, about how she had just furiously quit her job and was planning an extended vacation to Utah where she was planning on becoming a Mormon. Louis can’t stop smiling.

“Ta dah!” Suddenly Harry flings an arm across Louis, stopping them in the middle of the pavement. “We’re here!”

Louis looks up at the building they’ve stopped in front of. “Tilman’s Pianos”, he reads off the sign that hangs in the window. Through the glass, he can see giant shiny pianos and his heart feels too big for his chest, because Harry has taken him to a piano store and for some reason, that makes him so happy he can barely breathe.

Harry opens the door for him, a little bell jingling, and when Louis walks in, the smell of wood overwhelms him, cedar and something that smells slightly musky. The door closes behind them and it’s suddenly quiet in the shop, the cars and crowds outside immediately deafened. The only noise is the quiet sounds of people playing, testing out the pianos, the slight murmur that trips delicately across the smooth surfaces of the piano and up into the high ceilings. Louis feels like he’s stepped out of New York City and into a tiny oasis, but instead of palm trees and water, there are imposing pianos and glossy sunlight and the warmth of the boy next to him.

Louis gazes around. It’s more pianos than Louis has ever seen all at once – there are at least 20 just within his line of vision, and the shop extends way into the back. Large panels are hung on the walls, acoustic panels, Louis thinks. It’s quiet. Peaceful. He can hear himself breathe, hear himself think.

When he turns to look at Harry, the look on Harry’s face takes his breath away. His eyes are wide, shiny, like he’s never been here before, even though he obviously has. Harry’s gazing around, like he’s trying to soak up the way everything looks. Like he’s come home, Louis thinks.

A woman comes up to them, her heels quiet on the carpeted floor. Her hair is blonde, crisply styled, but her smile is wide and welcoming. She has red lipstick on, and Louis can see a bit of it on her teeth when she smiles at them. “Welcome, Mr. Styles. What can we do for you today?” she asks, extending her hand to Harry like they’re old friends, although Louis guesses maybe they are, if she welcomes him by his name. There’s a little bit of awe in her eyes, as if Harry himself is a celebrity to this shop, which Louis supposes is probably true.

“Hello, Mrs. Crowe,” Harry smiles at her, and Louis turns a laugh into a cough at the way Mrs. Crowe’s eyes get big and she giggles, sounding way younger than she looks. He supposes Harry’s charm has that effect on people. “It’s so nice to see you again,” Harry says, holding her hand in both of his, and she giggles again. “This is Louis, I was wondering if Grace was open?”

Who the fuck is Grace?

Mrs. Crowe nods emphatically, and gestures with her free hand towards the back of the store, and Harry smiles at her again. “C’mon, Lou,” he says to Louis, and they weave their way through the pianos. Louis looks back towards the front of the store, to Mrs. Crowe, who’s watching them go with a slightly dreamy smile on her face and Louis has to turn around again before he bursts out laughing.

“Think you just made her day, Haz,” Louis chuckles and bumps his elbow against Harry, who blushes and knocks him back.

“I’ve been coming here for ages, they all know me,” Harry says quietly, trying not to disturb the people around them. They stop at a piano with dark wood, glossy and smooth. Gold lettering on the side reads _Fazioli_ , curling script, shiny against the wood. As Louis watches, Harry trails his fingers along the side of the piano, and one corner of his mouth quirks up, looking a bit like he’s greeting a long-lost friend.

“This is Grace,” Harry says softly, sits down on the stool, and glides his fingers up and down the ivory keys. His hands look like they belong, like they’re sighing in relief at the cool touch of the keys.

“You named a piano?” Louis asks. After all this, Harry must be crazy after all.

Harry nods, a smile tucking at the corner of his mouth, his dimple popping out. “Doesn’t she look like a Grace?”

“I was thinking more like Margaret, really,” Louis says sarcastically, but he blunts the sting of his words by nudging Harry’s jaw with his knuckle. Harry turns his head, bites at Louis’s finger and smiles up at him.

“I come and visit her as often as I can.” Harry brushes his fingers against the music stand. “Don’t want her to get lonely.”

Louis nods his head like he understands what Harry means, but he doesn’t, not really. He’s not sure it matters though, because the look on Harry’s face as he plays middle C is enough for Louis to love this piano named Grace, simply for what it’s (she’s?) doing for Harry right now. Every muscle is leaning towards the piano, like there’s a magnetic force inside the strings and hammers, and his arms are folded like bird wings at his sides, loose and relaxed.

“I talk to her sometimes,” Harry says softly, leaning over the keys until his curls are almost brushing the top of the stand. His mouth moves, like he’s whispering. Louis wonders how many secrets lie in the wood of the piano. He likes the idea of the piano holding Harry’s words for him, letting them sink between the hammers and strings and then sealing them up again so no one ever finds them. Louis feels grateful towards the piano.

“You’re a strange child, Harry Styles.” Louis leans against the top of the piano, folding his head into his arms and watching as Harry tentatively steps out a scale, long fingers delicate.

“You love me.” Harry looks up, grins, and Louis’s heart flops up into his throat and he smiles shakily, hides his mouth against his wrists.

Harry starts to play, fingers soft against the keys, but confident, and his lips press together tightly, eyebrows furrowed like he’s concentrating. The chords are heavy and slow and they sink into Louis’s skin, coating his bones with the soft thump of the hammers and his mind is full of the bow of Harry’s mouth, the look of the veins in his hands as they move over the keys. His heart feels like its dropped low into his stomach and sits there heavily, and Louis wants to close his eyes, so he does, and he lets the music wash over him. He doesn’t notice the way employees come out of their offices to watch the two boys at the  _Fazioli,_ the way they smile at the boy with the feathered hair and the confused adoration on his face, and the legendary boy who comes in on such an irregular but constant basis and takes everyone’s breath away with his playing. The sound around them melt away until all that matters is the sounds of the Harry’s playing sinking into Louis’s skin.

It’s a short song, and as the last chord glides across Louis’s skin, he suddenly remembers where he knows the song from.

“Hey, this is from  _The Notebook_?” His mouth is muffled against his hands. When Harry looks up, his eyes are dark and heavy but they seem like they’re glowing, and his mouth is loose and happy. He looks blissful. It’s lovely.

“Is it?” Harry asks, his mouth curling around the words loosely, like he’s almost tipsy, but of course Louis knows that’s not true. “It’s a Chopin prelude. E minor.”

Louis nods. “From that scene where Allie plays it in the old house.”

“Oh, yeah, that scene where Noah, like, ravishes her on the piano afterwards?” Harry grins up at him, his eyes wicked.

Louis rolls his eyes. “Yes, that scene, but I’m not ravishing you on any pianos, Styles.”

Harry chuckles dirtily, and lifts a finger from the keys, traces from the corner of Louis’s eye down to the corner of his mouth. The trail his finger leaves burns, and when Louis smiles, Harry thumbs at Louis’s bottom lip. “Shame,” he muses. “It’s a fantasy of mine.” He winks at Louis, laughs when a flush crawls up Louis’s neck and he swats at Harry’s hand.

For the next hour, Louis sits next to Harry on a stool they pull up, and Harry teaches him elementary scales, covers Louis’s small tan hands with his long, pale fingers. They sit and laugh quietly and Harry won’t stop kissing Louis’s neck, sending shivers down his spine in a way that’s entirely inappropriate for a piano store in the middle of an afternoon on a Saturday. Their hips bump together and Harry’s thigh stays close to Louis’s the entire time, heat seeping between them. Louis feels so content, like he’s inside Harry’s mind finally, seeing how he works, watching the synapses of his mind fire, and finally seeing the reason for it. He watches Harry stroke the keys, sunlight falling across his content face, and he somehow understands the darkness that descends over Harry sometimes, finally gets why when Harry’s in those moods, the only thing that helps is when he locks himself in his piano room for hours.

Louis wonders, those times when Harry doesn’t answer his phone and Niall tells Louis not to worry, if Harry is down here, making love to this piano. He hopes so.

After a while, Louis just sits there, leaning against Harry while he plays various songs, always slow and heavy against Louis’s skin, coating his bones. He watches the way Harry’s fingers move. It’s beautiful.

Finally, they stand up, Harry’s back unfolding over the piano and cracking, popping when he stands to his full height. They stretch their shoulders. Harry leans down, puts a finger under Louis’s chin, and murmurs into his mouth, “thank you”. Louis doesn’t know what Harry’s thanking him for, feels like he should be thanking Harry, but he smiles into Harry’s mouth and lets the familiar feel of Harry’s lips mold around his.

When they’re back out onto the street, and Harry’s mouth is slack and happy, and his shoulders are no longer taut and up around his ears, Louis asks, “now what?”

They turn the corner, the sun beaming off a glass skyscraper, blinding them, and Harry says, “Now it’s your turn!”

“My turn for what?” Louis nudges Harry’s shoulder and Harry takes his hand, threads their fingers together, and places them in his pocket. Louis smiles at the way Harry knew what he wanted without even having to ask. Christ, he’s gone for this kid, despite everything.

“I just showed you my favorite place in the city, now I want to see yours.” Harry looks over at him and beams.

Well, alright then.

Twenty minutes and a subway ride later, they’re standing in front of a small little building tucked between two tall ones. With no introduction, Louis takes Harry’s hand and pushes open the door.

It takes a second for their eyes to adjust to the darkness of the shop, after the white brightness outside, but as soon as the door closes behind them, Louis sighs comfortably and he can’t help the smile that pulls across his face.

Harry looks around in awe at the tall stacks of books, shelves that almost reach the ceiling, the long and skinny aisles, the dim lightning that sends the back of the shop into shadows. His mouth is open slightly, eyes huge.

“Welcome to my favorite place in the city.” Louis pats Harry on the cheek and smiles at the look of awe in his eyes.

“I didn’t even know you like to read,” Harry breathes out, voice muffled and quiet by the tall shelves. Louis nods. He does. He never tells people, because they always ask him what his favorite book is, and Louis thinks it’s an insult to the literary world to ask someone what their favorite book is, because there’s no conceivable way for any great reader to choose their favorite book. Not to mention, people look at him and don’t immediately think  _academic_.

Harry doesn’t ask what his favorite book is, and Louis likes him a little bit more just for that. Instead he pull off his mitts, mouth still open in awe, and wanders down one of the aisles, his feet shuffling against the thick carpet. As Louis watches, he trails his fingers along the spines of the books, some of them so worn down that they’re held together with elastic bands. That’s why Louis likes this shop; it’s secondhand. The books, they remind Louis of himself sometimes, left in a cardboard box at the back step of the shop, handled and loved, abused and broken. Louis thinks he might’ve been abused and broken before, but as he watches Harry retreat into the shadows at the back of the shop, he thinks maybe he’s on his way to being handled and loved, and the thought makes a smile stretch across his face.

Louis heads to the bookshelf where they keep the most recently picked up books, and starts picking his way through thick novels, skinny paperbacks, and begins a pile of the ones he wants on the desk. He hasn’t been here in ages, there’s a new load of books for him to look through and he feels quiet and happy. The distant sounds of the cars are just a buzz; in the shop, it’s almost perfectly silent but for the sound of him turning pages. It smells like dust, like ink and old paper. It’s Louis’s favorite smell. The thing he loves about books is that they’re not his own life. It’s not him. It’s someone else. He doesn’t have to be Louis Tomlinson for however long the book is. He can forget about the toxic waste in his blood. Just be someone else. It’s easy in a way that life has never been for Louis. Sometimes he likes to come here when the German opera gets too loud, when Zayn’s presence is big and heavy and all-consuming around Louis, and he feels so small that it’s almost as if he’ll disappear. He comes to this shop to find himself again. He curls up in an armchair, tucked up under the frosted window, a stack of books on the table next to him and a coffee, and if he has to beg Eleanor, the girl who usually works here, to keep the shop open later for him, well, she never says no.

The small stack on the desk gets taller, wobbling slightly, so Louis finishes his perusing of the new shelf and heads off down the aisle to see where Harry disappeared to. He wanders up and down the aisles, greeting some of his favorite books like old friends, stopping to read his favorite page of Hosseini’s  _A Thousand Splendid Suns_ , the moment when Laila opens the box from Mariam’s father and finds the Pinocchio VHS. He pats the book fondly and slides it back into place and continues down the aisle.

At the end of the aisle, he catches sight of Harry. He’s further down the aisle from where Louis is peering around a bookshelf. The sunlight from a window high near the ceiling is catching him perfectly in a spotlight, casting the space around him into shadow. Harry’s taken his coat off and it’s pooled around his narrow waist, crumpled and abandoned where he sits cross legged on the floor, legs folded into a pretzel in a way that Louis didn’t think Harry’s long legs were capable of folding. His red scarf is halfway undone, hanging down off his neck and trailing on the floor. It contrasts so beautiful with the pale of his neck that Louis thinks if Zayn were here, he’d be sighing with artistic appreciation of what a sight Harry makes, a giant child with a book in his lap and his cheek smushed into his palm, elbow resting on his knee. The collar of Harry’s loose tshirt gapes, showing his necklaces and pale collarbones, the indistinguishable lines of script. His thumb plays with his bottom lip, soft and loose, absentminded. His other hand drums on his knee, fingers tapping like he’s playing piano, and Louis smiles, can’t help it. This boy, this man child, it feels like he’s crawled inside Louis’s rib cage and lain down to nap for a thousand years, and has no plans of ever leaving. Louis is surprised to realize that he doesn’t want Harry to leave.

 “He’s really pretty, your boy.” Eleanor comes up behind him, silent like a cat.

“He is,” Louis agrees. “Not my boy, though.”

Eleanor laughs softly, so as not to disturb the boy on the floor, whose eyes are downcast as he reads whatever book is sitting in his lap. “Uh huh, sure.”

“We’re just messing around.” Louis leans against the book shelf and smiles guiltily at Eleanor, who he knows can see the lie in his eyes.

“I’ve known you a long time, Lou, I can see you radiating fond.”

Louis bumps shoulders with her and rolls his eyes, but he wonders if she’s right. She pokes him in the rib cage and wanders off down the aisle, quiet and thin like a waif. Louis has only ever seen her in the bookstore, never outside. He wonders what she would look like in the winter sunshine. He only knows what she looks like in the dimness of the shop, shadows casting half her face into darkness all the time. He wonders if she has a boyfriend.

Louis looks down the aisle, watches as Harry’s long fingers slowly turn the page and then immediately return to whatever song he’s playing on his knee. He’s struck by a sudden urge to go over, to sit down next to Harry and lean against his shoulder, read whatever he’s reading, learn what song is in his head that’s making him tap his fingers so joyfully against his knee. He wants to pull Harry’s fingers away from his lips and clasp their hands together, line up his fingerprints to Harry’s so that he can feel the whorls and swirls of Harry’s prints against his and know that he has Harry’s most unique feature imprinted on his own skin. His hands shake with how much he wants, needs, to go over to Harry. There’s a tug low in his belly. Louis ignores it. He turns away sharply, away from the lovely picture that Harry makes on the floor, and hurries down the next aisle.

Sometime later, when Louis finds himself blindly staring at the travel section and trying to make his hands stop shaking, Harry comes up behind him.

“Planning a trip to Los Angeles?” His lips brush against the shell of Louis’s ear.

Louis turns his head slightly and feels Harry kisses the skin behind his ear, sending small ripples down his spine. “Maybe.”

“We would have to go through Tornado Alley,” Harry muses. “Or maybe the Black Hills!”

Louis’s mind is blank. “What?” He turns to face Harry fully. Harry has his coat draped over his arm, his scarf wrapped three times around his neck. He looks ridiculous and lovely, ridiculously lovely, cheeks flushed from the cloistered warmth in the shop.

“Tornado Alley, it’s in Kansas, lots of twisters,” Harry says. “And the Black Hills-”

Louis snorts. “No, Christ, I know what Tornado Alley is.” He shuffles his foot closer to Harrys. “We?”

“Well yeah.” Harry looks closely at him, green eyes peering out from his face in the dim lighting. “You and me.”

“Oh.”

***

Later, they’re walking down the street and Harry is telling a story about the first time he went to the carnival when he got to New York. “And Niall, he ate like seven funnel cakes in a row, I thought he was going to puke!” Harry waves his hands up in the air, like the concept of Niall throwing up funnel cake is just too much to take in at that moment. Louis takes a burning sip of the coffee that he’s finally gotten.

“Did you mean what you said before?” he asks suddenly, interrupting Harry’s passionate discourse on the benefits of a strawberry funnel cake.

“That funnel cakes are my favorite food?” Harry asks, furiously rubbing his sleeve against his nose where it’s been dripping constantly from the cold. “Yeah, Lou, I’m honest-to-god-serious, funnel cakes-”

“No, the road trip,” and Harry stops talking.

“Oh. I mean. Yeah?” He looks at Louis out of the corner of his eye, Louis can tell, but he continues looking forward, at the back of the man in front of them, the way his shoulders are clearly too big for the jacket he’s wearing.

“Oh. Okay.”

There’s a pause.

“You should be flattered, you know,” Harry chuckles. “That means I like you enough to sit in a car with you for thousands of miles.” He laughs and pokes Louis in the ribs, utterly ineffective against the puffy down of Louis’s jacket. Louis just smiles and they walk in silence for a bit.

“Are you ready for the rest of the surprise?” Harry says after a while. He sounds excited, like he’s got something giant and amazing up his sleeve. They’re walking close together, elbows bumping and it feels comfortable.

“There’s more?” Louis laughs. “I thought all of that was the surprise!”

“It was, but there was a late minute addition.” Harry grins cheekily. “Want to know?”

Louis nods.

“Well first we’re going for a fancy dinner,” Harry starts, “and then!” he reaches into his pocket and whips out two pieces of paper, “We’re going to the symphony!”

The symphony. Harry Styles is taking him to the fucking symphony.

“Holy shit, are you serious?” Louis takes the tickets from Harry and stares at them.  “Dvořák, Bartók, and Tchaikovsky”, he reads out loud, his tongue tripping over the unfamiliarly foreign names. He looks up at Harry. “Is this for real?”

Harry grins tentatively. “Is this a good reaction?”

Louis nods emphatically, leans over and smacks a loud and wet kiss on Harry’s cheek, prompting Harry to blush and the corners of his mouth quirk up prettily.

“Let’s go get ready for our night, then, Louis Tomlinson,” Harry extends his hand to Louis, elegant and posh like a gentleman, and they descend down the stairs to the subway and Louis doesn’t bother hiding his smile.

***

Louis decides quickly that the New York Philharmonic is his second favorite place in the city, after the bookshop. He looks around, eyes wide, at the fancy clothes and the dark red curtains, the golden railings and the stage that’s set up with music stands and chairs, ready for the evening. The hall is loud with people coming in and out, but he and Harry are tucked up into the balcony, in what are apparently Niall’s season tickets’ spots. Louis would never have pegged Niall as a symphonic type of person, but Harry explains that Niall likes to come to the symphony to make friends with music producers, buy them a drink, and convince them to take home a copy of his EP. Louis guesses that Niall is rather good at charming the gray-haired men that are sitting around them, sipping on champagne and talking in excited tones to women dripping in jewelry. He and Harry are by far the youngest in their box, and Louis feels like a child as he rubs his sweaty palms on his black trousers, ironed like he actually fucking cares about how he looks. Well, maybe he does, when Harry’s sitting next to him with his black shirt buttoned to his throat, silver tie hanging loosely, looking like every image of a darkly handsome rich kid. Louis doesn’t think he’ll ever tire of seeing Harry wear black; the contrast of it against his pale skin and the red of his lips and the darkness of his hair.

Harry is excited too, his eyes bright and glittering, fingers tapping a tango on Louis’s knee. He tells Louis that Dvořák is his favorite composer and Louis nods like he knows everything about Dvořák, listens patiently while Harry rambles about the  _New World_  symphony that is apparently going to be played tonight. Louis can’t stop watching the way Harry’s mouth curls around the words, his eyes bright with passion, and Louis just loves that Harry loves it. And that’s such a foreign feeling for Louis, wants all the passion for himself, usually. But Harry’s hands waving like an overexcited child – it makes Louis happy, and he doesn’t think too hard about it.

Then he remembers, and, “what did you mean, a last minute addition?”

Harry stops talking about the tonality of the 5th symphony of  _New World_  and blinks at Louis. “What?”

“You said the symphony was a last minute addition,” Louis explains. “Why?”

Harry glances down at his lap, twists his fingers in his pants leg. “Um, I just-” he clears his throat. “I wanted to apologize, for, um. For Monday.” He looks up at Louis, his eyes big and green with guilty. “I wanted to make it up to you.”

Louis can’t breathe. His heart is high in throat, lodged there, and he feels a rush of affection for the boy sitting next to him, who took him to his favorite place in the city, who shared that with him, and now sits here, treating Louis to a perfect end to the one of the best days Louis has had in a very long time. Louis attempts to think of the last person who tried to apologize for letting him down. He can’t. His heart is huge in his chest, shoving his lungs out of the way to make room for all the brightness of Harry that’s shouldering its way into his heart.

He leans over, the armrest digging into his stomach, and captures Harry’s lips with his own, soft and surprised. They rest their foreheads together and breathe quietly, the sounds of everyone in the hall drowning out until all Louis can see is the green of Harry’s eyes and all he can feel is Harry’s fingers tight on his knee, an apology and a plea for forgiveness all at the same time.

“I kinda like you, Harry Styles,” Louis whispers into Harry’s mouth, and he feels Harry smile against his lips, their teeth bumping together. He presses one last kiss to Harry’s mouth, and pulls back, sitting back in his seat.

The lights start to go down but he can see the way Harry’s mouth is still slightly open, eyes dazed and slowly turning darker green as the hall becomes dim and the hush of the symphony-goers starts to quiet down. Just before it goes completely dark, Harry breaks out into a huge smile, picks up Louis’s hand where it sits on the armrest, brings it to his mouth, and kisses his thumbnail. He leans in close, mouth brushing Louis’s ear as he whispers,

“I kinda like you too, Louis Tomlinson.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok, if you somehow failed to read the first note on the first chapter, or you've forgotten...
> 
> this is it. this is the end of this fic as it is. there won't be anymore.
> 
> if this is enough of a happy ending for you, then excellent! if you were hoping for some more enlightenment as to the fates of harry and louis, please feel free to message me OFF ANON at queenmcgonagall, and i would be glad to give you a little detail as to what was going to be the final imagining for the story. unfortunately, life as a twenty year old student has caught up to me and fic has fallen by the wayside, particularly this one. please follow me at queenmcgonagall for any other non-fic writings, or if i get back into fic, any of those! thanks for sticking with me!


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